Meaning of the word "Liberals."?

For about 40 years, the Republicans used the word 'liberal' to mean anyone they disagreed with or any idea they didn't like. This was just a way of shortcutting rhetoric. If they didn't like something or someone, it was easier to say it was 'liberal' than to explain why they didn't like it. Hitler and Mao and Stalin were 'liberals' and so was President Clinton, so there was no difference between them. So if they wanted to fight an idea Clinton had, they would say they were fighting it because it was 'liberal' and that was easier than actually making an argument.

After decades of misuse and abuse, the L-word just lost whatever meaning it might once have had. So starting in 2008, they upped the rhetoric. They started calling Obama 'socialist', 'marxist', 'communist' and 'fascist'. They use these words interchangeably, as if they meant exactly the same thing. Which, in modern Republican rhetoric, they do! You can see that 90% of the people here on Y/A who throw these words at Democrats or Obama have no idea what they mean! They just know it's something bad, and they hate Obama, so he must be one.

Even real liberals today (like yours truly) call themselves 'progressive' now, which actually better describes the position anyway.

Lincoln -was- liberal for his day. Abolishing slavery was a very liberal idea at the time. But giving away US public property to corporations for them to get rich, like the land grants to build the railroad, is not exactly a liberal thing. Real liberals would have had the fed. govt build the railroads so they would be public property, like our national highway system. Lincoln's land grant system was a way of making a few people incredibly wealthy at public expense. Republicans call this 'privatization'. And I think that has set the tone for Republican economics for 150 years now.

Liberals are people who think that more government can solve everything. They believe by giving the government more power, the government in turn will help everyone in the long run by collecting higher taxes and pouring money in social programs. The only problem with this is that the government can not solve everyone's problem. You give a government too much power, and it will began to rule over people and abuse its power. It becomes corrupt and no longer works for the people, but the people work for it. I mean look at were we are now. The government is woven into so many corrupt scandals and corrupt things that it is just trying to get out of, and instead of the government listening to us and following what the people want, we just pay bucket loads of taxes into a government that just spends it all away on stupid things such as millions of dollars in tax returns to a playboy bunny mansion, while people can barely eek by with their part time jobs. That is liberalism in a nutshell.

The world has changed, as well as political philosophies, several time since 1862. I hope you have more recent examples to make your point. Keep in mind, even with your example, the railroads were about commerse. This is what drives the economy as opposed to the social spending that Liberals like to do. Eisenhower, in the 50's, did similar spending on the Interstate Highway System. It have a similar boost to the economy as a whole.

Liberal, at it's heart, means Liberty. It is about what brings liberty to the people. How it does that has changed over time. The Founding Fathers of the US were considered Liberal, wanting liberty and freedom from the British Empire. This Liberty was founded in Individualism, equal opportunity, equal justice and Natural (Individual) Rights. It was about simply giving the individual freedom to go as far as their own abilities will take them. Soon after, starting with the French Revolution, Liberalism turned to government as the vehicle for trying to achieve liberty. It was founded in equal outcome (not equal opportunity), social justice and Human (Collective) Rights. Notice how the French Revolution devoled into the Reign of Terror, followed by a new tyranny of Napoleon. Liberalism starting looking to Utopian solutions to problems and got tyranny at worst; sluggish, big-government, highly regulated, debt-ridden economies at best.

The talk about classical liberals vs today's liberals. That is because today's liberals were yesterday's progresssives. Today's liberals main goal is to destroy this country and replace it with a lot more like the socialist systems in Europe

Labels constantly get co-opted by many groups.

Democrats pretend they represent democracy.

Liberals pretend they're for liberty and freedom.

Today, the term Liberal simply means Pathological Liar.

Liberals are intelligent, educated, support equality, compassionate, pragmatic, and inclusive. Conservatives, just like you, are not.