this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
666 points (94.4% liked)
Political Memes
12522 readers
1690 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No true Scotsman
Understanding academically defined political terms is not the same thing as arguing arbitrarily defined cultural differences.
Academically defined political terms != actually used political terms in the US and even some other western countries now.
Being a liberal in mainstream USian political discourse can mean a lot of things, usually includes being pro choice, against mass deportations by ICE, etc, pro LGBTQ rights, etc. Often includes being pro healthcare for all as well as free higher education for all, despite the latter ones not being liberal policies in the classical sense of liberalism. Looky here
Social liberalism has been used without the 'social' qualifier in the US since the 30s now if Wikipedia is to be believed. You start talking negatively about liberals, a lot of people will assume you mean you want to own black people, hunt gay people for sport, ban abortions and perhaps lower the age of consent, because being "liberal" has started to mean being pro individual liberties, equality and improving everyone's quality of life. Things you would, in the original definitions of the terms, associate with ideologies to the left of liberalism.
Liberalism, in the US, is then actually somewhere between liberalism and social democracy, closer to the latter, despite the name being closer to the former. The left wing here on the fediverse in particular engages in language prescriptivism over descriptivism this way.
Yes, I, too, wish these terms had stayed static because it sucks when the same word means different things to different people, but that's not the reality we live in.