Maybe this is facile but it's been bugging me.
I was thinking about this, and the modern liberal is fundamentally not liberal.
Like, yeah, ok, it's a dogshit ideology that destroyed the world, more than once.
But there was a time when it was radical, at least compared to Feudalism.
Now? I don't even think most liberals are anti monarchy. Like they literally aren't. If you ask them point blank, should all royalty be abolished, or was the French Revolution worth doing, they're gonna flat out say no.
The modern liberal essentially believes in two things. The absolute inviolability of the power and legitimacy of Western hegemony and institutions. And that things remain basically the same, and cannot change for any reason, because change is bad unless you can be sure it'll make things better.
That describes Conservatism. These people are conservative, fundamentally.
Conservatives that speak woke, maybe. But they believe all the same shit. Hierarchy, domination, and sadism, just mediated by the market and culture instead of whatever "conservatives" believe.
And actual conservatives are just proto, or outright, fascist at this point. They're completely untethered from the conservative tradition.
Right underneath our noses, liberalism died. Good riddance maybe but, there are, legitimately, none left.
For 97% of my life liberal was the ideology you openly identified yourself with to put yourself on the side against the Republicans and their views against LGBTQ+ Rights, War-making in the Middle East(we did NOT call it imperialism), and general racism, there was nothing else.
Rush Limbaugh was the radio host who helped popularize "liberal" as a bad word among conservatives in the US, it was a bad word because if you identified with it you were considered weak, un-masculine, unpragmatic, against American Values, and likely a removed (that was another one popularized by Rush Limbaugh.)
Most people who call themselves liberals today, specifically older folks are not liberal, it's how they've been categorized as a result of not being introduced to leftist tendencies by theory but through popular media discussion of dense philosophical works. It's our jobs as leftists if we are a People's movement to engage with people who would be allies if given the chance.
And it's why everyone needs to **read theory. **