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#liberalism — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #liberalism, aggregated by home.social.

  1. It's interesting to watch the American Democratic party fall into the same bitter recriminations that have consumed Canada's NDP - it's not us that's wrong, it's the voters.

    Canada also shows the remedy - Liberalism still has legs. Canada simply takes the world as it is, fights hard for its own beliefs and interests, doesn't confuse bold action for populism, and makes no apologies for doing what it must in the face of adversary near and afar.

    #canada #liberalism #centrism #politics #uspol

  2. CW: Graphic descriptions of bodily mutilation.

    theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/a

    This story and that of Marius Gustavson (linked in the article) engaged my interest because I have read very little about the sexual preferences and practices described. I find them more than a little off-putting.

    Nevertheless, beyond the sensationalistic interest, the articles did get me thinking.

    I am aware of this equation:

    My Thing That I Really Like = Your Fetish = Their Weird Fixation.

    Yet in addition to the standard liberal thoughts about the harm principle, the licitness or otherwise of paternalism, informed consent and so on, I also found myself wondering about the propriety of terms like "disgust" and "perversion".

    I still have not sorted my thoughts out.

    #NeilHopper #MariusGustavson #BodyModification #Amputation #SexualPreference #Sex #Liberalism #harm #Consent #Disgust #Perversion #Apotemnophilia #BodyIntegrityDisorder

  3. Given the choice, Centrists always side with fascists or the right. #LifeLesson You can't trust centrists. Example:
    "the leader of the ailing Liberals, Simona Mohamsson, shocked her party last month by abruptly switching positions on SD, announcing that her party would accept being in government with a far-right force she had previously denounced as racist. She also held a press conference alongside Åkesson in which they hugged."
    theguardian.com/world/2026/apr
    #liberals #Centrists #Centrism #liberalism

  4. "Many liberals, after the double shock of Trump and Brexit in 2016, confessed their supposed mistakes and performed contrition, along the lines of: we failed to pay attention to the “left-behind”; we must book political safaris in Appalachia; we must closely study Hillbilly Elegy to demonstrate compassion for the heartland. Of course, self-criticism and checking one’s priors is a good thing. But behind the ostentatious displays of “we failed to listen” was also a profound narcissism: if only we acted (or at least talked) differently, all would be well. Only liberals, or so the assumption goes again, have agency; performing contrition reinforced that flattering image.

    Even worse, this narcissism keeps shoring up the right’s claim that there is a “real America” and that only they speak for it. As any viewer of Sunday-morning shows has noticed, Republicans can malign city dwellers without anyone batting an eyelid; Obama saying something about guns and religion in rural areas triggers a multiyear scandal. It would not even occur to anyone to demand an apology from GOP members for insulting all urban dwellers. The asymmetry is taken for granted; liberals just accept it. This is what victory in a culture war looks like: Democrats accept the cultural framings enforced by the other side, even though polls would suggest that the liberals’ positions are often more popular (or, dare one say, reflect more about “real America” than the far-right fantasies pushed by Fox and its far-right friends)."

    theguardian.com/commentisfree/

    #Liberalism #Liberals #Centrism #ReactionaryCentrism #Fascism #Woke #AntiWoke

  5. #Liberalism, whatever you think of it, has shaped the Western world and is under attack right now. The #Economist has well-written a #History of liberalism. Worthwhile reading…

    𝗟𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺: 𝗔 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆

    From #Locke and the “social contract” to #Rawls and the “veil of ignorance”, here are the people, ideas and world-shaking events that made liberalism what it is, and isn't, today

    economist.com/interactive/prim via #TheEconomist

    #Keynes #Hayek #Popper #Schumpeter #Ahrend #Rousseau #Marx #Nietzsche