From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Re: Original Meaning of 'Liberal'
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: The Bates Motel
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 16:17:55 GMT

bmb@bluemoon.rn.com (Bryan Bankhead) writes:
>
>How'liberal' and 'left wing' became associated with socialistic policies 
>is frankly obscure to me, it is well to note that modern 'conservatism, is 
>just as statist as it's left wing counterpart. In america the term for the 
>original free-market tradition is 'classical liberal' or increasingly 
>'libertarian'.

As a Canadian "Red Tory" who is the son-in-law-to-be of a German
Christian Democrat (Kohl's party), I object! (-;  True descendants 
of European liberalism exist outside of American borders, they have
evolved since the 18th century, and we are not at all like American
liberterians ...

"The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation.", to
paraphrase Canada's Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (but
his government didn't carry this out very well )-;).

Paddy Ashdown's Liberal Democrats can be easily read about in the New
York Times, Toronto Globe & Mail or even better, in a great British
newsmagazine called The Economist, quite readily available here.

The Germans have a term for this, and it's called "social market" ...
non-American conservatives tend to be social marketeers, and are the
living descendants of the classical European liberals that American
Libertarians make claim to heritage.  A Commerzbank executive who
spoke at a German-American Chamber of Commerce dinner we attended
last spring declared that universal health insurance in Germany
has proven itself to be a "useful capitalist tool" -- you won't
here that in America!

Actually, The Economist magazine is a good example 'cos its editorial
philosophy is a modern descendant of this classical Euro-Liberalism
that Libertarians have tried to appropriate in front of an unknowing
American audience (and thus, I've reset this follow-up piece to world
distribution (-;) -- reading the Economist, they are nothing like the
Lib/libertarian stuff you read on USENET.  None of their editorials
express the kind of hyper-individualist rhetoric, mean-spiritedness,
paranoia and label-slinging/pigeon-holing that is expressed by various
net.champions of liberty who just want the world around them to piss
off.

True European Liberalism grew with the advent of technology, growth of
commerce, and changes in society; in fact, a major flaw in Libertarian
attempts to appropriate the European Liberal tradition is that outside
of the areas they know best in (freedom of speech, individual choice,
unconstitutionality of the War on Drugs/Child Porn/etc.) their other
attitudes smack of conservatism including the politics of blame* of the
worst of them (e.g., Rush Limbough -- "Out of toilet paper?  It's the
damn liberals at it again!").  In European Liberalism moving into the
21st Century, there is no misplaced nostalgia for a late 18th/early
19th century "golden age", nor had it ever considered the American
Constitution (an admirable work that it is) to be as sacred as a 
third tablet from Mount Sinai -- after all, they're Europeans. (-;

* n.b., bogeyman politics are equally feeble coming from the right or
from the left.

A lot of non-Americans that Lib/libertarian dogmatists have scrapped
with over different issues here on USENET are true, direct descendants
of the traditional European Liberal philosophy.  Jim Robinson in
Vancouver, and Gerald Olchowy in Toronto, and Phil Carney at TAMU (an
exchange student from Lancaster); Indy at UCI is an American, and his
ability to support both H. Ross Perot and public/fiduciary health
insurance is quite analogous to the multifaceted philosophy that
European Liberalism has become in the ensuing centuries, infusing
itself in many different Euro-Australo-Canadian parties.  Helmut
Kohl's moves at the recent Maastricht EC/EU conference proposing a
Charter for Labour, German government actions to mediate the GATT
dispute held up by France (dragging in the rest of the EC), and
creation of an environment for free enterprise are all related even
if it blows away the checklists drawn up in America of what's an X,

One of the problems with debating about political situations outside
of the United States is that parties and thought tend not to fall
between lines drawn by Americans on what is right and what is left.
Stumping for free trade and for public health insurance is not any
kind of contradiction for people like me and Gerald Olchowy and Jim
Robinson.

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare				
> gld@cunixB.cc.columbia.EDU		Oct 26/92: Just say "OUI!"
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			(Let's worry about the economy!)
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:48731 ca.politics:8304 ba.politics:5739