Clarity on Liberalism

Although I have previously provided what I perceive to be an accurate definition of current American Liberalism, I found some of the language I used to be potentially insulting to those who might consider themselves to be liberal. This post will clarify the definition of liberalism as it currently exists in America.

First of all, this definition is not uniform. A politician who considers him or her self to be liberal is different from the average voting liberal.

The voting liberal is a person who believes that liberalism is supposed to serve as a source of fairness and compassion in society. This is what most people will notice as they encounter liberals in discussion. Themes like equal rights, individual choice, and social justice appear in one form or another in just about every political discussion among liberal voters. Liberal voters have good hearts, whether or not one agrees with their thoughts on how to fix social ills.

The political liberals, on the other hand, are the ideological branch of liberalism. Where conservatives stand upon eternal principles, political liberals hold few eternal principles to be self evident. In other words, they define reality differently from conservatives. Most of the principles that political liberals hold dear are based on a progressive understanding of the world.

When you get to the higher levels of thought in liberalism, you will hear the term enlightenment used from time to time. I think enlightenment defines how political liberals define the understanding of reality.

Enlightenment is the idea that all understanding must be deduced through reasoning. If you consider the religion of Buddhism, it represents this understanding of reality very well. It is a highly intellectual practice that focuses on introspection of one's inner being (coming to terms with one's own identity) and the search for the common factor that unifies everything in the universe.

Individualism is viewed as more of an internal practice, but society is viewed as something that needs to function in unity. This is where socialism becomes appealing to liberals because it provides such a structure for this dichotomy. The one who is truly enlightened will see the bigger picture; namely that your life is part of a much larger functioning system. The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. This is also why environmentalism is a chief cause among liberals. Without the planet, what else is there for the life that dwells upon it?

I am critical of liberalism, not because of its surface arguments, but because of those arguments deeper implications. Certain aspects of liberalism have become religious to the movement and have thus become dogmatic. Currently, the political class is wrestling to resolve the conflict their extrapolations on their ideology have created. I would love to know your thoughts on how I have defined liberalism in this post.

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