When the internet was fairly new, the word 'irregardless' actually appeared fairly frequently on it. If you use this word in a forum today, it's pretty unlikely that you'll get away with it. Someone, somewhere, will correct you. You'll even get corrected if you use it ironically. Using ironically incorrectly out of a sense of irony gets silence, by the way.
I only bring this up for one reason: We can, collectively, decide that we're not going to tolerate the misuse of our language and change the dialog. It can occur in a few different ways. In the case of 'irregardless,' we mostly used shame and humor to end it. 'Irregardless' is actually a great example, because it's not a word you're going to use because they sound alike (people who 'think' in sounds, for example, might use the wrong 'your' because they are homophones, and they 'hear' their text, even if they know which is right cognitively) and it's not a word you're going to use because it has an irregular tense or second meaning (hanged vs. hung, lighted versus lit, inflammable, etc.). The only people for whom 'irregardless' makes more sense than 'regardless' are those for whom their first language allows a double negative to mean a really strong negative. In English, however, "not not doing something" means "doing something." (In other languages, not not doing something may mean REALLY not doing something...long time readers may know I think every human should experience a different language at least once, this is an example of something you might not understand without ever getting a different language experience.)
In the grand scheme of things, the word 'Liberal' isn't the word I'd fix if I lived in a world where I could press a button and get everyone to use one word correctly. If I had that button, the word I would pick would be evolution. Seriously, that is the word I would pick. Change in relative frequency of alleles in a population over time (or equivalent definition) or GTFO. Unlike Liberal (and Conservative), the word evolution requires a bit more background to be understood, and the raging ignorance of the people who use it wrong, and the self-indulgent smugness of some who use it only mostly right means fixing that problem means changing more than a lack of knowledge. Liberal is not a word that is being used incorrectly because of stupidity, it's a word being used incorrectly with the intention of discrediting more than 50% of the English speaking world.
In the Newspeak of the Republican right, Liberal means telling people what to believe and regulating the hell out of everything. I use the word Newspeak very intentionally here, because Newspeak includes the idea that one can kill ideas by changing the meaning of words, removing certain metaphors, etc. I believe the use of the word Liberal in a way completely contrary to the meaning of the word is an attempt to kill liberal ideas, which is why someone will look you dead in the eye, say something liberal, and say "but I am not a Liberal."
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The above sticker sums up the literal differences between the Liberal point of view and the Conservative point of view. The distinction between the two actually comes from the Protestant traditions of Christianity, and historically that is where the dichotomy comes from. You might not like the above sentiment, but it is accurate.
Liberalism essentially states that as the facts come in, we have to change to deal with them. Liberalism notices that a thing is not fair or not right, and says we must change to accommodate this fact. Liberalism includes the belief that in order to have the best world we can have, we need to base our laws and other decisions on facts, not beliefs. For example, if we notice that a factory's workers are dying of black lung, Liberalism says "no factory should be killing people with black lung," it doesn't actually say you have to close the factory. If, for example, your competitor's workers are not dying of black lung, Liberalism says "you should do what your competitor is doing to prevent black lung. Again, Liberalism is facts based. Liberalism is sometimes called progressiveness, because it indicates a forward movement. As facts come in, we have to adapt to them. It is a type of evolution, but since most of you use that word wrong, it might be better to just define it as a change, based on facts. This change is as good as the facts. Sometimes the facts aren't very good, so we fail to adapt correctly. You can sum the Liberal stance this way: If something is not working, we need to try new things. It is better to fail by trying new ways than to fail by repeating things that don't work. If we treat all things as equal, the Liberal point of view errs on the side of what seems to hurt the least number of people.
Conservatism states that regardless of the facts, we need to keep things the same, that we need to conserve traditions because they work. For example, some conservatives in Islamic countries point out the importance of Muslim contributions in Math and Science, and point out that those contributions come from gender-unequal teaching. Since these contributions arose in situations where women got less (or no) education, they believe that reducing (or removing) the modern tendency to allow girls to be educated will conserve the tradition of Math and Science in that scenario. You can sum up the Conservative stance this way: If something is not working, we need to return to the prior way we did things to repair it. If nuclear energy is dangerous, we should go to coal, if kids are not learning in school we should return to having parents teach their kids, if divorce is happening it must be because of the new kinds of marriage, not a flaw in the old kinds. If we treat all things as equal, the Conservative point of view errs on the side of romanticizing the past. The assumption that because we didn't perceive an injustice (especially as children) that injustice in the past did not exist.
Both sides have their flaws. Liberals (myself included) are often quick to discard things when the facts come in to prove them wrong. This means we tend to get caught up in fashions and fads. We also tend to be more interested in new facts, not old facts. Liberals who are not good at distinguishing emotional appeals from actual facts can be swayed into really stupid points of view. Although they are not the majority of anti-vaxxers, the liberal anti-vaxxers are the best example of this as far as I am concerned. These are people who believe the 'new facts' about vaccines rather than the 'old facts' without actually understanding either. Liberals tend to get screwed up the most in situations where there is no way out that doesn't hurt someone. A very recent example of this was when the movement of the Space Shuttle to CSC resulted in the felling of 400 trees in LA. Educated populace=good. Trees=good. I watched fellow liberals bitch each other out over this one. My own answer, by the way, is fell the trees and replace them with better street trees. This is because in the past 20 years, we have totally learned what makes a great street tree, and now we've got way better data on planning them. My view here is because I lived through Arborgeddon*....and so did my trees.
So Liberal is often portrayed as meaning people who want to force changes on you that won't work, based on arcane or even fictitious things that are fuzzy or hard to understand. This isn't completely untrue, except liberalism requires facts to work, and generally believes that if you get the facts, you become invested in the change, and you want to try the new way. That may be overgenerous from the point of view of some people, but I am what is called a Libertarian Liberal, which means that I tend to err on the side of freedom. There are some situations where I go all the way to the other side of it and become an authoritarian Liberal... mostly science-based stuff. I have a big problem with people, for example, who kill their kids because they hate science (blood transfusions, anti-vaxxers, allergy ignorers [but also bubblewrap parents], anti-gay Quiverfullers who quintuple their chances of having gay sons, some crazy diet promoters, etc.) and I could probably get behind some very authoritarian ways to fight them (I generally err on the side of capitalism, for example, when we pay people to vaccinate their kids, we can save money...but that's hard for people to understand and we're never going to get a majority behind it.)
The ideal Liberal actually doesn't dislike the old way because the old way is old. I actually think stay-at-home parenting, for example, is incredibly important. I was late to finish college, and late to start a career, because we decided, in my family, that my kid needed a stay-at-home parent. One of us worked, the other stayed home. Of course, we were both women, so most Conservatives would say it does not count. I should add that, again, facts-based beliefs are what are important, here. For example, we live in a world where stay-at-home parenting is not something most can afford on a single salary, and I see the solution to this not as 'returning women to the kitchen,' but as a collection of things, which could include everything from group parenting to a living wage. Stay at home parenting is preferable to many things, but poverty isn't preferable to non-poverty.
In an ideal world, every time someone claims Liberalism is about regulating shit to death or forcing people to do things against their will, or forcing people to stop doing what works, people should point and laugh at (or at least pity) the deranged idiot claiming it. Likewise, every time a "conservative" advocates a return to things that did not work in the past, we should scoff at them. In the case of the meaning of the words Conservative and Liberal, we should all agree that the new meanings, which are NOT facts-based, and NOT what the words meant in the past, are just stupid.
*Contrary to popular belief, snow in Buffalo in October, especially mid-October, is very damn rare, and when it does happen it melts before it hits the ground. I had to bring zucchini and lettuce inside during this storm. It's not that uncommon to have a little snow in the air on Halloween, but in my ten years in Buffalo, the killing frost for my garden has always happened in the end of October/beginning of November. I think most of you who think this have confused Buffalo with Syracuse, which is almost 2 weeks ahead of us in this. Most Halloweens in Syracuse (or where Phoe is from, east of Syracuse) are cold as hell. We always planned our costumes to be worn with heavy jackets.
I only bring this up for one reason: We can, collectively, decide that we're not going to tolerate the misuse of our language and change the dialog. It can occur in a few different ways. In the case of 'irregardless,' we mostly used shame and humor to end it. 'Irregardless' is actually a great example, because it's not a word you're going to use because they sound alike (people who 'think' in sounds, for example, might use the wrong 'your' because they are homophones, and they 'hear' their text, even if they know which is right cognitively) and it's not a word you're going to use because it has an irregular tense or second meaning (hanged vs. hung, lighted versus lit, inflammable, etc.). The only people for whom 'irregardless' makes more sense than 'regardless' are those for whom their first language allows a double negative to mean a really strong negative. In English, however, "not not doing something" means "doing something." (In other languages, not not doing something may mean REALLY not doing something...long time readers may know I think every human should experience a different language at least once, this is an example of something you might not understand without ever getting a different language experience.)
In the grand scheme of things, the word 'Liberal' isn't the word I'd fix if I lived in a world where I could press a button and get everyone to use one word correctly. If I had that button, the word I would pick would be evolution. Seriously, that is the word I would pick. Change in relative frequency of alleles in a population over time (or equivalent definition) or GTFO. Unlike Liberal (and Conservative), the word evolution requires a bit more background to be understood, and the raging ignorance of the people who use it wrong, and the self-indulgent smugness of some who use it only mostly right means fixing that problem means changing more than a lack of knowledge. Liberal is not a word that is being used incorrectly because of stupidity, it's a word being used incorrectly with the intention of discrediting more than 50% of the English speaking world.
In the Newspeak of the Republican right, Liberal means telling people what to believe and regulating the hell out of everything. I use the word Newspeak very intentionally here, because Newspeak includes the idea that one can kill ideas by changing the meaning of words, removing certain metaphors, etc. I believe the use of the word Liberal in a way completely contrary to the meaning of the word is an attempt to kill liberal ideas, which is why someone will look you dead in the eye, say something liberal, and say "but I am not a Liberal."
Liberalism essentially states that as the facts come in, we have to change to deal with them. Liberalism notices that a thing is not fair or not right, and says we must change to accommodate this fact. Liberalism includes the belief that in order to have the best world we can have, we need to base our laws and other decisions on facts, not beliefs. For example, if we notice that a factory's workers are dying of black lung, Liberalism says "no factory should be killing people with black lung," it doesn't actually say you have to close the factory. If, for example, your competitor's workers are not dying of black lung, Liberalism says "you should do what your competitor is doing to prevent black lung. Again, Liberalism is facts based. Liberalism is sometimes called progressiveness, because it indicates a forward movement. As facts come in, we have to adapt to them. It is a type of evolution, but since most of you use that word wrong, it might be better to just define it as a change, based on facts. This change is as good as the facts. Sometimes the facts aren't very good, so we fail to adapt correctly. You can sum the Liberal stance this way: If something is not working, we need to try new things. It is better to fail by trying new ways than to fail by repeating things that don't work. If we treat all things as equal, the Liberal point of view errs on the side of what seems to hurt the least number of people.
Conservatism states that regardless of the facts, we need to keep things the same, that we need to conserve traditions because they work. For example, some conservatives in Islamic countries point out the importance of Muslim contributions in Math and Science, and point out that those contributions come from gender-unequal teaching. Since these contributions arose in situations where women got less (or no) education, they believe that reducing (or removing) the modern tendency to allow girls to be educated will conserve the tradition of Math and Science in that scenario. You can sum up the Conservative stance this way: If something is not working, we need to return to the prior way we did things to repair it. If nuclear energy is dangerous, we should go to coal, if kids are not learning in school we should return to having parents teach their kids, if divorce is happening it must be because of the new kinds of marriage, not a flaw in the old kinds. If we treat all things as equal, the Conservative point of view errs on the side of romanticizing the past. The assumption that because we didn't perceive an injustice (especially as children) that injustice in the past did not exist.
Both sides have their flaws. Liberals (myself included) are often quick to discard things when the facts come in to prove them wrong. This means we tend to get caught up in fashions and fads. We also tend to be more interested in new facts, not old facts. Liberals who are not good at distinguishing emotional appeals from actual facts can be swayed into really stupid points of view. Although they are not the majority of anti-vaxxers, the liberal anti-vaxxers are the best example of this as far as I am concerned. These are people who believe the 'new facts' about vaccines rather than the 'old facts' without actually understanding either. Liberals tend to get screwed up the most in situations where there is no way out that doesn't hurt someone. A very recent example of this was when the movement of the Space Shuttle to CSC resulted in the felling of 400 trees in LA. Educated populace=good. Trees=good. I watched fellow liberals bitch each other out over this one. My own answer, by the way, is fell the trees and replace them with better street trees. This is because in the past 20 years, we have totally learned what makes a great street tree, and now we've got way better data on planning them. My view here is because I lived through Arborgeddon*....and so did my trees.
So Liberal is often portrayed as meaning people who want to force changes on you that won't work, based on arcane or even fictitious things that are fuzzy or hard to understand. This isn't completely untrue, except liberalism requires facts to work, and generally believes that if you get the facts, you become invested in the change, and you want to try the new way. That may be overgenerous from the point of view of some people, but I am what is called a Libertarian Liberal, which means that I tend to err on the side of freedom. There are some situations where I go all the way to the other side of it and become an authoritarian Liberal... mostly science-based stuff. I have a big problem with people, for example, who kill their kids because they hate science (blood transfusions, anti-vaxxers, allergy ignorers [but also bubblewrap parents], anti-gay Quiverfullers who quintuple their chances of having gay sons, some crazy diet promoters, etc.) and I could probably get behind some very authoritarian ways to fight them (I generally err on the side of capitalism, for example, when we pay people to vaccinate their kids, we can save money...but that's hard for people to understand and we're never going to get a majority behind it.)
The ideal Liberal actually doesn't dislike the old way because the old way is old. I actually think stay-at-home parenting, for example, is incredibly important. I was late to finish college, and late to start a career, because we decided, in my family, that my kid needed a stay-at-home parent. One of us worked, the other stayed home. Of course, we were both women, so most Conservatives would say it does not count. I should add that, again, facts-based beliefs are what are important, here. For example, we live in a world where stay-at-home parenting is not something most can afford on a single salary, and I see the solution to this not as 'returning women to the kitchen,' but as a collection of things, which could include everything from group parenting to a living wage. Stay at home parenting is preferable to many things, but poverty isn't preferable to non-poverty.
In an ideal world, every time someone claims Liberalism is about regulating shit to death or forcing people to do things against their will, or forcing people to stop doing what works, people should point and laugh at (or at least pity) the deranged idiot claiming it. Likewise, every time a "conservative" advocates a return to things that did not work in the past, we should scoff at them. In the case of the meaning of the words Conservative and Liberal, we should all agree that the new meanings, which are NOT facts-based, and NOT what the words meant in the past, are just stupid.
*Contrary to popular belief, snow in Buffalo in October, especially mid-October, is very damn rare, and when it does happen it melts before it hits the ground. I had to bring zucchini and lettuce inside during this storm. It's not that uncommon to have a little snow in the air on Halloween, but in my ten years in Buffalo, the killing frost for my garden has always happened in the end of October/beginning of November. I think most of you who think this have confused Buffalo with Syracuse, which is almost 2 weeks ahead of us in this. Most Halloweens in Syracuse (or where Phoe is from, east of Syracuse) are cold as hell. We always planned our costumes to be worn with heavy jackets.