Question Time: What is a "Neo-Lib"?

[maxsolomon]

I don't even know what this person's point is, but his repeated use of "neo-lib" has truly confused me. i know what a neo-con is; a FORMER LIBERAL who, influenced by the theories of Leo Strauss & involved with the PNAC, has embraced an agressive, self-interested foreign policy as a neccessity to the maintenance of american power.

BUT, WHAT THE HELL IS A NEO-LIB?

am i a neo-lib? i don't feel newly liberal.


<The Downing Street memo has the neo-libs hyperventilating <"British prewar memo hit U.S. postwar plan," News, June 12>. They charge the memo proves that President Bush "fixed" the intelligence to support his decision to go to war with Iraq.

The so-called "fixed" intelligence that the neo-libs are so upset about has a familiar ring to it. It sounds congruent to the message that was "drumbeat" into the American psyche for the eight years of the Clinton administration; that Iraq had active chemical and biological WMD programs and was continuing to restructure its nuclear-weapons program.

— Jerry Rhodes, Bothell>

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002341516_monlets20.html

[Nickster]

1. Because they don't understand what Neocon means but they

know that it isn't good, so they try using something similar for us. Neocon=Neolib to them. There must be a right wing memo out there about this, because I've heard the term used before.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. The first time I heard "neoliberal," it was used in the 1980s

to describe the DLC: maintaining the Democratic traditions of individual liberties but coddling big business and the military-industrial complex. The yuppie wing of the Democratic party. The outsourcing-is-okay-as-long-as-my-stock-dividends-go-up wing of the party.

[bushisanidiot]

3. Anyone who doesn't fall lockstep behind Pres. Nosepicker

soon we'll all be carted off to gitmo for noting the emperor has no clothes.

[KyndCulture]

4. Well I know I've been accused of that before... by the nutters.

I'll guess and say it's referring to US, the people who never let go of this stuff and keep on fighting. The ones they call tinfoilers too, because we keep digging.

[meow2u3]

5. Neoliberal

The British term for a neocon.

[Burried News]

6. An ADL Board Member

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/4734_52.htm

[murielm99]

7. This is what Wikipedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

[maxsolomon]

10. This doesn't sound much like thinking bush is an idiot.

The term neoliberalism is not the only one for this movement, many supporters argue that it is simply "liberalism," while critics often label it pejoratively as "Thatcherism." Because of close association between this philosophy and neoclassical economics, and confusion with the overloaded term "liberal," some advocate the term "neoclassical philosophy." It is criticized (in different ways) by socialist, social liberalist, anarchist, and conservative parties, as well as by intellectuals and economists. Some portray neoliberalism as the imposition of "free markets from the top-down" since it has been promoted by international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and by centralized state organizations such as the European Union and the U.S. government. Others identify neoliberalism with neo-corporatism, and political-economic domination by multinational corporations.

Though many liberals adhere to neoliberalism, their ideology has a broader content, and other liberals oppose neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is not a version of the new liberalism of John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, John Maynard Keynes, Franklin Roosevelt, or the British Liberal Democrats, which saw a positive role for government through interventionism in the economy. Rather, it focuses on the establishment of a stable medium of exchange, and the reduction of localized rules, regulations and barriers to commerce, and the privatization of state-run enterprises. Critics of neoliberalism associate it with globalization, and with the rise of multinational corporations, as well as monetary and fiscal austerity at the expense of social programs.

The term is often used as a pejorative; in this context it means not the economic theory, but the implementation of global capitalism and the power of multinational corporations, as well as the effects of free trade on wages and social structures.

[rodeodance]

16. "advanced liberalism" is another word for neoliberalism.

[maxsolomon]

8. i'm growing convinced that no one on the right even

remembers the DEFINITION of "liberal".

would a "neo-lib" be someone who was once a right wing nut case who woke the F up & now opposes the GOP? there's like 3 of them, right?

[sadiesworld]

17. Self-delete.

Responded to wrong poster.

[ghostsofgiants]

9. Neoliberalism is basically a belief in free market capitalism

From the Political Compass website:

"U.S.neo-conservatives, with their commitment to high military spending and the global assertion of national values, tend to be more authoritarian than hard right. By contrast, neo-liberals, opposed to such moral leadership and, more especially, the ensuing demands on the tax payer, belong to a further right but less authoritarian region. Paradoxically, the "free market", in neo-con parlance, also allows for the large-scale subsidy of the military-industrial complex, a considerable degree of corporate welfare, and protectionism when deemed in the national interest. These are viewed by neo-libs as impediments to the unfettered market forces that they champion."

[sadiesworld]

11. That's one fucked up use of the term.

[ghostsofgiants]

13. Outside of the US really...

Liberal doesn't mean leftist. It's used in reference to economics/the market. Liberal (and neoliberal) refer to a preference for an unfettered free market.

[sadiesworld]

19. My point is that it isn' the neo-libs who are particularly upset

about the DSM and the Iraq War, it's the progressives.

[ghostsofgiants]

20. Yeah, that's true

Methinks some people need to brush up on ther political terminolgy perhaps. Maybe the writer thought that since progressives use the term neo-cons to describe the Bush regime, that maybe adding "neo" to the beginning of a term makes it an insult or something? Haha, I don't know.

[Village Idiot]

12. Free Dictionary Definition of NeoLiberal:

Noun 1. neoliberal - a liberal who subscribes to neoliberalism
liberal, progressive - a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties

Adj. 1. neoliberal - having or showing belief in the need for economic growth in addition to traditional liberalistic values
liberal - tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition


http://www.thefreedictionary.com/neoliberal

[MsTryska]

14. Just for the record....NeoCons are NOT former liberals....

they are former communists/trotskyites/hard leftists.


all they've done is exchanged communisim for fascism - one authoritatian modality for another.

[dean_dem]

15. I think in the context of the article...

...it's meant as kind of an insult. Like primate1 said, the term "liberal" has traditionally been someone who favors free markets and little state intervention, which is not what many people who consider themselves liberals (myself as one them)in the politcal sense would necessarily agree with. For this writer it seems to be a way of saying the American left are not the "real" liberals, but instead some twisted, inferior version of liberalism.

Kind of like how we use the term "neocons." The neocons are not your standard pro-segregation, women-belong-in-the-kitchen, prayer-in-school-conservatives. They're the bomb-everything-in-sight, starve-the-poor conservatives.

[Idioteque]

18. From Wikipedia

Neoliberalism