This is also a current definition of "Liberal"
A
liberal is someone who supports
liberalism, which is a
political philosophy on the left of the political spectrum. Liberals favor an increase in
government spending, power, and control, as in
ObamaCare. Most liberals also support the
censorship and
denial of
Christianity because of its strong moral values
[1]. Liberals who are a part of the
secular left prefer the
atheist religion over the Christian faith, as atheism has no objective morality to hinder their big government plans. This lack of an objective morality, or
moral relativism, was used as one of the main justifications for crimes against humanity by the
Nazis and the
Communists, both of whom were
liberal. Increasingly, liberals side with the
homosexual agenda, including supporting
homosexual "marriage". Most
[2] liberals favor a
welfare state where people receive endless entitlements without working. Liberals are often anti-
Christian, or otherwise disagree with moral or social principles held by many American Christians. The liberal ideology has worsened over the years and degenerated into economically unsound views and intolerant ideology. Most liberals simply support, in knee-jerk fashion, the opposite of
conservative principles, while lacking an actual ideology or values of their own.
Polling data has consistently shown that a increasingly large percentage of Americans identify as conservative, rather than as liberal, currently by 38% to 21%.
[3]
A liberal supports many of the following political positions and practices:
- Spending money on government programs (the significant economic problems in the Eurozone due to government debt will no doubt increasingly discredit this aspect of liberal ideology and make things more difficult for advocates of liberal economic ideologies)
- Denial of science[4] (especially creation science)
- Government's ability to solve economic problems[5]
- The belief that terrorism is not a huge threat, and that the main reason for Muslim extremists' hostility towards America is because of bad foreign policy [6]
- Brainwashing voters with propaganda
- Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion
- Censorship[7]
- Socialism[8]
- Unsuccessful Keynesian economics as opposed to sound free market economics
- Cessation of teacher-led prayer in classrooms and school/state-sponsored religious events.
- Gun control
- Elitism
- Pseudo-intellectualism[9]
- Anti-Americanism
- Affirmative action[10]
- Opposition to government regulation or restriction of obscenity, pornography and violence in video games as a First Amendment right[11]
- Authoritarian government[12]
- Government-funded medical care, such as Obamacare
- Belief in evolution
- Destroying the Christian foundations on which America was built on.
- Taxpayer-funded and government-controlled public education
- Limiting personal freedom[13]. Liberal support for gun control is an example of this.
- High progressive taxes[14] as a form of class warfare against wealthy business owners[15].
- Placement of men and women in the same jobs in the military
- Slowly eroding the U.S. through Progressivism.[16]
- Legalized same-sex marriage and homosexual adoption
- Tax and spend economics
- Rejection of Biblical standards
- Economic sector regulations[17]
- Denial of conservative roles in history. For example, liberals frequently claim[18] that George Washington was a deist when he was actually a devout Episcopalian.
- Spreading of political correctness
- Destroying liberty
- Ending Western morality
- Non-syndicalist labor unions
- Encouraging promiscuity through sexual education (the teaching of safe sex) rather than teaching abstinence from premarital sex[19]
- A "living Constitution" that is reinterpreted as liberals prefer, rather than how it is thought to have been intended.
- Government programs to rehabilitate criminals
- Bestiality as a human right[20]
- Abolition of the death penalty
- Environmentalism[21]
- Globalism
- Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.
- Opposition to full private property rights.[22]
- Reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine
- Opposition to domestic wire-tapping as authorized in the Patriot Act
- Regulation of business rather than a laissez-faire capitalist economy
- Opposition to the Constitution. Liberals seek to expand federal power at the expense of local government and silence the conservatives who hold them back, violating the 10th and 1st Amendments respectively.
- Denial of traditional gender roles
- Support of financially irresponsible policies
- Advocating policies which are proven to be incorrect
- Destroying conservative family values and replacing them with immoral Hollywood values, such as drug use, narcissism, and abortion
- Encouragement of global warming alarmism
- Rejection of logical[23] standards
- Persecution of Christianity with deference to other religions, such as Islam.
Liberals currently use two Clauses of the Constitution to try to expand their power: the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause. The General Welfare Clause mentions "promoting the general welfare". This to a liberal means taxing the rich at increased rates and redistributing that money. The Commerce Clause, on the other hand, says that Congress has the power to regulate trade with foreign nations, between the states and with the Indian tribes. Since the days of FDR this Clause has been interpreted very loosely and has resulted in the federal government expanding its power. The latest example is The Affordable Care Act (ACA), better know as
Obamacare. In the ACA, the liberals justify the individual mandate by saying it regulates commerce between the states.
Liberal - Conservapedia
Now admittedly the definitions from conservapedia come from a decidedly conservatively biased point of view while we don't have a clue about the ideology of whomever wrote the Wiki definition.
So the issue is not what a dictionary definition is, but what is meant by the common use of a term. Personally, I would not have included all the content of the Conservapedia definition, but they came a hell of a lot closer to the ideology of the modern American liberal than Wiki did.
Most of us understand the difference between a dictionary definition and how a word is commonly intended and used.,
The libertarian (small "L") will sometimes be at odds with a Libertarian (capital "L"). And a whole lot of Wiki's definition of a libertarian is not something I, a staunch libertarian, can agree with at all.