this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
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I get that these terms get tossed around without people knowing what they mean, and I'm not against language evolving. But liberalism was never really intended to describe wherever you are on a progressive-conservative spectrum.
Pulling from Wikipedia, but it's a similar definition in most texts.
Classical liberals just tended to look progressive compared to people who weren't liberals, because, well, read the definition. The countervailing force to liberalism is authoritarianism. It's more of a government legitimacy and structure philosophy.
The definition of liberalism changed a lot, especially thanks to right-wing entryism.
Words lose their meaning over time. Once "alt-girl" meant a woman specifically into alternative rock, and not an umbrella-term also involving metalheads, goths, punks, etc. Once cuck meant someone with a cuckoldry fetish, now it's a pejorative used against people who (at least supposed to) bend over and do nothing in situations really bad for them. Once LARP meant Live Action Role Playing, now it used to demean "fake" fans.
Liberalism once stood for liberty, equality, and paternity. But paternity stood in the way of capital, so liberalism split into three main groups: socialism, moderate conservatism (neoliberalism, classical liberalism, you know the rest), and social democracy.
For the cuck one, it's not so much that they bend over and do nothing, it's that that actively invite it. That's the parallel to the fetish - just doing nothing but also not consenting would be adultery. Consenting and facilitating it is what makes someone a cuckold.
The LARP comment when I've seen used as a pejorative is mostly in "stolen valour" type situations. For example, ICE officers LARP as real cops, cops LARP as soldiers, etc. It's use as an insult is to imply that someone is pretending to be/do something they're not and likely could never aspire to be.
I really like this way of looking at it.
One thing though, the countervailing force to liberalism is illiberalism. Authoritarians can be liberal even if in theory they oppose individual rights. This is seen in liberal autocracy and ordoliberalism.
That's fair, illiberalism is the proper countervailing force here, it just has some Venn diagram overlap with authoritarianism where the latter curtails political freedoms. It is easy to conflate them!
How do you oppose individual rights while supporting the individual right to self determination?
Liberal autocracy is an oxymoron, unless you define liberalism along the progressive-conservative spectrum. Which is what the capitalists and autocrats and tankies would like you to do.
Dictatorships which doesn't enforce some specific social order, but which does aggressively stomp out criticism. See - people who moved to UAE and thought it was a free country until their government didn't like what they said anymore.
...that is an example of enforcing a specific social order...?
Maybe I should've specified culture / moral
Well, if we're adding qualifiers, then NK is an example of freedom and liberty. As long as I specify that we're talking about pooping only. I don't think thats illegal.
I think you may be confusing authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
As some other people have pointed out liberalism can be across the spectrum and does not really define political leaning.
I think you perhaps hold liberalism to higher ideals when in reality it has always been the propaganda the wealthy use to obscure their actual goals.
Well. Yeah. All politics is the application of high-minded ideals to the real world. Communism is supposed to lead to the dissolution of the state, and it leads to a different group of wealthy people in charge. Capitalism is supposed to give the common man access to wealth, and it leads to a group of wealthy people in charge. Case in point:
Authoritarianism is the ideal implementation of a hierarchical structure in society. Totalitarianism is what it looks like in practice.
Liberalism is the idea that everyone should have the right to live how they see fit. Of course everyone is going to try and co-opt that.
I can agree with a lot of that except for capitilism. A byproduct of small business capitalism is it does an okay job at distributing wealth. This is not the goal of capitalism, but a side effect of its initial stage.
Liberalism is the propaganda the wealthy class use to maintain control.
That's kind of the point. Everything in the ideal sense helps the common man, and everything in reality is co-opted by the wealthy into propaganda used to maintain control. Some things work better than others.
The concept that people have the right to self determination is, in my opinion, more resilient to co-optation by the wealthy, because even the most ardent modern bootlicker still fundamentally believes it is their choice.
I agree, but with the caveat that the concept and reality are two different things.
What makes a progressivist changes depending on the society they are in.
When liberalism was first invented, it was extremely progressive. People that deny it today are extremely regressive. But yes, it's not progressive anymore, it's just the bare minimum.
One of those things is not like the others, and that's the fundamental problem with liberalism. Private property is antithetical to liberty, equality, and consent of the governed because it enables the exploitation of labor and creates a class hierarchy. By defending the individual's "right" to private property liberals betray every other value they claim to uphold.
I'm only replying because I think this is a situation of conflicting definitions.
I think folks should be working off the same definitions in a conversation, or at least clarify their working definitions and identify differences. E.g. private vs personal property. If you believe in your right to own a toothbrush, or a painting, or a mattress, and have control over its use or exclusion of use by others, then whether you call it private property or personal property rights, I think you are on the same page, in principle, with most folks. After that, the difference is a matter of extent to common societal infrastructure.
But not clarifying the words we use and what we mean them to be makes everyone feel further apart on these issues.
Just my two cents.
The definition you gave - and that liberals use - makes no distinction between private and personal property, and therefore encompasses both. Because of that it becomes a matter of interpretation whether limits to what a person can own infringe on their right, and when the power in society lies with those who own the means of production and use it to exploit labor there is an incentive to interpret the right as being without limits. That's why I believe that establishing a "right" to property is fundamentally problematic. It would be better instead to cover the things a person ought to have with other rights such as a right to shelter, a right to basic needs such as food and water, a right to be secure in their personal effects, etc.
The only comment I'll make, is that being clear with definitions and which part of a definition you disagree with is helpful to discussions. I agree that private property is a superset of personal property. But in your response you didn't introduce the distinction nor explain the part of the definition you find antithetical to liberty. I think most people wouldn't know the different definitions and would have a knee jerk reaction to what you are saying, potentially interpreting your statement more strongly than you intend. Unless you intend to say you find individual ownership of toothbrushes antithetical to liberty.
That's all. Have a great day!
I get where you're coming from and I agree that it's important to speak in a way that gets your meaning across clearly to your audience, but in this case since I'm commenting in a political memes community on a platform used mostly by leftists I expect people to have some familiarity with the concept of private vs. personal property. I would communicate differently - and I do - when talking to people in other settings.
That's a self-contradictory definition.
For example, ownership of limited resources (something which fall inside that "right to private property" part) actually reduces the "liberty" of most people (which is another part in that definition) because it means a few control access to those resources, something which is painfully obvious in the current prices of housing.
And don't get me started on how the natural positive feedback-cycle that comes from the "right to private property" - whose ultimate effects can be described in simple terms as "the richer you are the richer you get" - in practice ends up subverting pretty much all of the rest: the rich aren't treated by the law the same as the rest (because even in the fairest of Justice Systems they can afford better legal representation that those who aren't as rich), they have far more political power than those who aren't as rich (because they can buy politicians, which the poor can't) and it's a lot easier for them to ensure their rights are abide by than it is for those who have less money for lawyers and courts.
In fact that whole definition feels like the kind of thing concocted by a Think Tank or Marketing Agency to swindle those who can't think their way past vague flowery positive sounding verbiage.
Liberalism is functionally as much pro-Liberty as the National Socialist Party Of The German Worker was functionally pro-Worker or the Democratic Republic Of North Korea is functionally pro having citizens freely choose who governs their country.
You're comparing the "right to private property" thing to capitalism and communism, and considering it from the economic vantage, which is precisely what the OP was saying isn't what the term was for.
Compare it to feudalism. "You're allowed to have things that are yours, and the king can't just take your farm".
There are certainly systems that can be described as free that don't acknowledge the concept of exclusive ownership, but they usually have to carefully define terms to handle why you can't take your neighbors wedding ring while they're showering.
The term is not without economic connotations, of course, but that part was not meant to imply a specific unlimited right. You could address everything on your list and be well within the definition because "you can have possessions" isn't contradictory with public ownership of scarce or critical resources.
If the definition is so open-ended that just that specific part can be have almost diametrally opposite effects depending on how it's interpreted, then it's meaningless and we can only determine what Liberalism really is by looking at the praxis of what it actually does when those who claim to practice it are in power.
The practice of Liberalism is invariably a system were in the more visible and direct ways (mainly the way Justice is enforced) people are given more Liberty than in other systems, yet at the same time that effect is entirelly offset by the second order effects of the resource allocation practices supported by Liberalism and the de facto implementation of the "right to private property" part, since the capture by a few of limited resources systematically restricts the Liberty of most people and the passing of such property from ancestors to descendants keeps such capture (which generally reflects either first-mover advantages or the multiplicative effect of previously held wealth) locked for generations, potentially forever.
I think the plight of Afro-Americans in the US is a wonderful example of how Liberalism in practice works: on one hand Liberals loudly demand equal rights and treatment under the Law for Afro-Americans (this is the visible, positive side), yet at the same time they support and reinforce the very resource allocation systems and interpretation of "right to private property" which keep the poor and downtrodden and their descendants poor and downtrodden, something which in practice seriously affects those who were previously discriminated against, which in America are overwhelmingly Afro-Americans since their ancestors were almost all Slaves: as they were discriminated against including in their access to property, their ancestors did not capture anywhere as many limited resources as the ancestors of those who were not discriminated against, and because how that "right to private property" that the Liberals enforce works, that means that their descendants today are far more likely to be poor, and because of the very system of resource allocation supported by Liberals, poverty means not getting to eat as good food, have access as good healthcare, live in as good housing, sleep in as good beds.
Mistreatment at the hands of the authorities will severely hurt and harm some Afro-Americans at some point of their lives, maybe even for years. Poverty because of "respecting the private property" of those who themselves or their ancestors captured limited resources harms most Afro-Americans 24/7 their whole lives (unsurprisingly, people in poorer areas even have a life expectancy of at least 10 years less than people in richer areas) - overtly Liberals demand "equality" of treatment whilst in practice they support the very systems than locks in the inequality from past discrimination and transform said inequality into life-long suffering.
(To add insult to injury, poverty itself also increases one's likelihood of being mistreated at the hands of the authorities and increases the hurt and harm caused by it)
Liberals claim to want equal treatment for Afro-Americans whilst making sure the very system around them, because of their ancestors having been severely discriminated against, de facto treats them far, far, worse than most others whilst that specific manifestation of injustice (suffering merely because one was born to poor parents) is put forward as "the way things are".
No, it really isn't "the way things are", it's the product of how "right to private property" is interpreted.
I wasn't talking about judging the system, advocating for it or against it.
My entire point was "you can own things" encompasses "no one can take your house" as well as "privitazation of every aspect of public life".
You're arguing against a strawman based on the assumption that a broad principle can't be judged on principle, but must instead be judge on the worst outcomes of the worst implementation of those principles.
Much like how "Democracy" encompasses a wide array of systems that are attempts to implement "people are ultimately in control of the systems that govern their lives". Democracy also has open ended results, and applying the same criteria and judging the concept of Democracy based on observed negative outcomes with positives accounted for leads to the conclusion that people should not be in charge of the systems that govern their lives.
If you invert the principles of liberalism as stated above, you end up with a pretty bleak sounding world that I would not like.
That doesn't mean that I'm a proponent of the specifics of modern free market liberalism.
What's your notion for what a world would look like without a right to own property, no right to self governance, no right to equality before the law, no right to political equality, and no right to liberty?
What I'm hearing you say is that you're opposed to failures to live up to the espoused principles, and opposed to cases where taking one of the principles to an extreme undermines the others. I readily agree. The implementation of how private ownership has been enforced and interpreted has been problematic very, very often. I do not think that means I should have no ability to own things, but rather that we need to make it clear the right isn't absolute to the individual.
It's terminology derived from the conversation surrounding "people" versus "kings", as opposed to "individuals" versus "society". Flipping it around creates friction because an outcome you would accept from a vote and fair trial is different from what you would accept from royal fiat.
My point is that "right to private property" is a far too vague "principle" for something which covers a huge number of often very different situations (from ownership of objects and pets, to that of other people and land), some of which have massive implications on another principle of Liberalism (which is supposedly the main one) - Liberty.
That "principle" alone can nullify everything else in that definition depending on interpretation, making the whole thing flawed because it includes such a massive trap.
I would say that the praxis of how Liberalism is implemented proves that point when it comes to, for example, Land Ownership which is invariably inheritable (which is actually stretching the definition of "right to private property") - something that is key in entrenching wealth (and hence liberty) inbalances across generations - as well as tending towards the highly individualistic "the owner of the land has supreme power over it" and away from accepting limitations to such supreme power when in the common interest (though, granted, in the US there are actually pretty weird cases which are the opposite of it, in the form of the power that Housing Associations have in the US, plus in other countries there are laws that allow Land to be forcefully purchased to, for example, make roads).
Anyways, I'm not saying that Liberalism has "failed to live up to the espoused principles", I'm saying that the combination of principles it is made up of per that definition in Wikipedia does not even add up to a coherent set of principles that can be achieved together because it contains inner contradictions - it cannot live up the espouse principles because if you increase some (most namelly "right to private property") you reduce others ("liberty") - in other words, to have more Liberty for more people you have to limit the rights of private property is various areas (the most obvious in past times was the when treating people as property - i.e. Slavery - whilst nowadays Land Ownership is key in reducing the Liberty of the many because it makes a world were most people are born landless and unable to acquire land).
To use a methaphor, you cannot claim that an assemblage of sprokets setup in such a way that some work against others, is a "machine" for making all the sprokets turn, since it will never be able to do so.
So what would you have instead of the right to private property?
Do you think that government derived from the consent of the governed is equally vague?
I'm not persuaded by the argument that taking one part to the extreme resulting in issues makes the whole thing invalid. To adapt your metaphor, you can press the clutch and shift a car into 1st on the freeway. Many bad things will result. This isn't an argument that cars are fundamentally flawed, but that you shouldn't do the bad thing.
Totally agree. That's not a contradiction to the concept of a right to private property, that's an invitation to a more nuanced discussion about what the management of property should look like in society.
Well, if the principles of Liberalism have to be picked and chosen - "some more of this some less of that" - rather than all being objectives to be maximized, with very different policies and outcomes for a political governing body depending on they picked and chose to maximize and minimize, then that definition itself isn't sufficient to define a Political Ideology.
When you wheel out this definition and claim "this is Liberalism" in the context of politics you're not actually presenting a political ideology, rather you're presenting a bag of ingredients to make political ideologies with, quite a broad range of political ideologies even since some of the ingredients in that bag don't actually work well with each other.
It makes total sense in the context of discussing politics for other people to point out concrete implementations of Liberalism as being "Liberalism", since those things are the actual political ideologies cooked from the Liberalism bag of ingredients, though in all fairness it would be more correct for them to say "this is what's made with with Liberalism" rather than "this IS Liberalism".
Anyway, this circles us around to my original point that when talking about politics you can't just point out to the Wikipedia definition of Liberalism and claim that's the one true definition of Liberalism because what's there is not a political ideology but just a bag of ingredients which can be used in quite arbitrary ways - that's kind of like pointing out at a bag of fruit, sugar, eggs and flour and claiming it's the one true Cherry Cake to dismiss other people pointing at actual cakes.
I don't think there's any ideology that you can unilaterally state "maximize every aspect and you'll be better, you don't need nuance". That's the entire reason why every political philosophy has myriad sects and schools of thought.
Your argument is the same one used to dismiss communism and socialism. In practice, their principles have led to bad outcomes.
It's odd to me to expect a political philosophy to have principles so precise that they don't require nuance when applying them.
My argument is that "Liberalism" is more akin to a domain of politics, such as "Leftwing", than to an actual Political Ideology such as "Socialism".
This is also consistent with the idea that there is a Freedom - Control political axis which is separate from the Left - Right political axis: Liberalism is basically being towards the Freedom side in that axis.
This means that you can't claim there is a real Liberal political ideology and that the various political ideologies which are deemed Liberal are not really Liberal because they're different things: Liberalism is a group of political ideologies defined around freedom and there is no such thing as "the one true implementation of it" because that's not a recipe, just a set of ideas which when combined in different ways and quantities (and, as I think we've both concluded in our discussion here, some of those liberal ideas don't play nice with others or in other words, some freedoms go against other freedoms), give rise to various different Liberal political ideologies.
So you (or whomever started this by pulling out that Wikipedia definition) are absolutely right in saying that the definition presented there is Liberalism and that the people who follow it are Liberals, what IMHO you are wrong in is in claiming that present day Liberals aren't following the "real" Liberalism: if there's one thing made clear from our discussion is that modern political ideologies which implement those ideas in whatever combination and orders and quantities (the examples I've been mainly talking about being those which put Property Rights above Liberty, such as Neoliberalism) are in fact Liberal since the political ideology they follow is a specific implementation of Liberalism.
So yeah, to wrap up the entire discussion, people who believe in modern ultra-capitalist hard-neoliberalism were Property Rights in the most trump Liberty are in fact Liberals -because the most hardcore and capitalist neoliberalism is made up from a specific combination of the principles of Liberalism - but then so are people who believe in Social Democracy because that political ideology too is made up from a (very different) combination of the principles of Liberalism.
This does mean that some Liberals are not in fact hard-right and can even be Leftwing (if, for example, they believe in Social Democracy), but in the present day most Liberals are hard-right because amongst the political ideologies that are made from the principles of Liberalism, Neoliberalism is much more dominant than Social Democracy.