Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn’t sure if !asklemmy@lemmy.world or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
No. I’m not talking from a US perspective. I’m talking from a political perspective. Liberalism is a moral and political philosophy - that is available in more than one flavour. Many things liberalism stands for are incompatible with right wing governments. Conservatism is far right? No, fascism is far right and there is an enormous difference between being conservative and being a fascist. Right and left are both part of a spectrum and run the whole gamut from dipping your toe in the water to being fully submerged. It’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The whole left and right label is very ambiguous and hard for me to define. I agree liberalism is an umbrella term for a variety of political ideologies. I was mainly talking about classic liberalism, while it seems that you are talking about social liberalism. Social liberalism, at most, is center left. So is social democracy. I was mainly thinking about neoliberalism, and such.
Again, no. I was talking about John Locke and David Lloyd George type characters - to suggest that the last Liberal party prime minister of the UK was to the right of the political spectrum was an interesting take I’d never heard before.
I’m no expert - it’s just that the (UK) liberal party merged with a left of centre party, the SDP (Social Democratic Party) and were briefly called the SDLP; before rebranding to the Liberal Democrats. They are still left of centre.
I think a lot of the liberal views towards capitalism can only be seen through the context of trying to humanise the inherent framework of capitalism. I think you’re correct that they never looked beyond existing within capitalism and therefore perhaps ultimately paid a price for that.
Thanks for the weekend wishes, same to you.
