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Comment by svachalek | Hacker News Reader

"there are lots of yuppies who want to defend their housing prices who might be liberal but I don't associate this position with leftism in any way"

People tend to call the Democrats the left, as they're at least somewhat leftward of the Republicans. It's at least easier for discussion purposes than speaking of the right and the other right.

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Yeah, I get it. But we also use liberal and I think in this particular case its worth drawing the distinction between these two "camps" of the democratic party.

The meaning of liberal and conservative has shifted so much over time that the term is now useless. The original meaning of liberal was about not killing you neighbor if they were a different religion - from which we get freedom of religion. That slowly expanded to things like freedom for slaves and women voting.

This is Phil Ochs describing liberals in 1966

In every American community, you have varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.

They haven't changed.

1966 is still modern. The liberals I'm describing go back much farther. The decleration of independence is perhaps their most famiuos work though even then things were changing

You're describing classical liberalism. The meaning of the term liberalism in the US switched to social liberalism back in the great depression (unless specified with a qualifier). It has remained roughly constant for as long as most people on this site have been alive. Though I will grant that the policies social liberals support have changed since then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

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