like is a radlib basically a social democrat or someone that really, really wants liberalism spread everywhere?

  • NonWonderDog [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    A contradiction in terms, which is probably the point.

    The word "radical" has become mostly a pejorative now, but the first "radicals" were called that because that's what they called themselves. The word "radical" is just Latin for "having roots" (e.g. the radical sign in math representing a square root). "Radical politics" means a politics that attempts to change society by attacking problems at the roots, whatever the conception of those roots. For us, that means attacking capitalism.

    A Liberal is someone who puts primary emphasis on personal liberty, especially as regards to personal and private property rights. In America, where words mean nothing, it instead means a zealot of the American Civil Religion (in which America is The Land of Liberty, so I guess this checks out?).

    But either way the current international order is (mostly) a Liberal one, where property rights are enforced by international economic and military policy. If that's the root of the current system, then a "radical Liberal" is an oxymoron.