What is a liberal policy?

[ZombieHorde]

What criteria do you personally use to judge the liberalness of any particular policy?

[skooooo]

1. If it helps the common person.

[ZombieHorde]

8. Is fixing pot holes a liberal policy?

[Mojambo]

2. One that helps the many rather than the few.

This is not the only criteria, but it is one.

[Oregone]

4. Many liberal policies focus on protecting the minority from the majority (few from the many)

[BlooInBloo]

10. Which thereby helps the majority as well, though they're too stupid to realize it.

[Mike 03]

3. Me, personally?

It is how many people a policy helps who are unable to help themselves, and it includes everything from education to health care for asthma medication.

Helping those who cannot help themselves.

[ZombieHorde]

9. How about fixing pot holes?

[jody]

5. If it protects the natural, inherent, inalienable/unalienable rights enumerated in our constitution

and those unenumerated rights covered by the ninth amendment.

[ZombieHorde]

7. What about the second amendment? nt

[jody]

16. SCOTUS in 2008 said the 2nd protects RKBA. n/t

[Oregone]

11. Why is "liberal" defined by "our constitution"

[jody]

15. I don't know, why? n/t

[Oregone]

6. That which promotes benefits or rights of a demographic to pacify them, as an alternative to a cost

-inefficient conflict.

Policies that renegotiate the social contract in the benefit of the lesser, as a means to avoid a turbulent and costly breach.

An engineered alternative to the natural formation of totalitarianism or revolution.

[Earth_First]

12. Whether or not my father supports it. n/t

[ZombieHorde]

13. lol!

[sandnsea]

14. It breaks dogma

and is geared towards the masses.

Self government is liberal policy, and too often we forget that we are the government.

[4 t 4]

17. A party that cares about

the people. The people that need help. Lets face it there is just not room in this world for everyone to be Oprah it doesn't work that way so the Have's should Always help the have not's, period. Bring everyone up a notch and keep going.

[Urban Prairie]

18. By how much it is villified by right wingers n/t

[Fgiriun]

19. My definition:

A liberal policy has the need and well-being of the people in mind regardless of ethnicity, religion or whether they adhere to liberalism or not. It protects people from the interests of the few with regresive ideals who threatens to underlie progress.
It follows knowledge and reasoning and not some twisted theist based belief.

[corruptmewithpower]

20. Liberal is a broadly interpreted term

Liberalism appears in two broad forms: Classical liberalism, which emphasizes the importance of individual liberty, and contemporary liberalism which emphasizes some kind of material equality

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

[4 t 4]

21. Welcome you guys to du

tough crowd here but lots to learn

[corruptmewithpower]

23. Thank you!

Even I don't always agree with myself.

[sandnsea]

22. Material equality

was part and parcel with the concept of individual liberty, not allowing the King to accumulate wealth and then determine its distribution. That is where the Republican's antimosity towards government redistribution of wealth has its basis. Unfortunately, they don't grasp that the wealthy will always have more access to power which is why the masses always have to fight for representation and equitable distribution of resources and that the government is the only place that it can get done.

[corruptmewithpower]

24. If you say so.

I'm currently favorable to a workable balance between liberty and equality. I certainly wouldn't want all of one and none of the other.

[sandnsea]

25. You can't have one without the other

That's the point.

You think the Revolutionary War was all about individual liberty??

[wildflower]

26. I think of it as either (1) the Golden Rule

Or (2) helping rather than hurting people.

You've asked about fixing potholes...that is admittedly fuzzy in terms of the Golden Rule, but in terms of helping rather than hurting, it's more clear.

[LeftishBrit]

27. To me the fundamental difference between liberal/left and right...

is that right-wingers consider that the 'strong' should have the right to advance themselves even if this means trampling on the 'weak' while the liberals/left-wingers consider that it is important to protect and help the 'weak' even if this restricts the ability of the 'strong' to advance themselves. The *extreme* right consider that it is positively good to trample on the weak, as it rewards strength and makes society less 'soft'. Thus the liberal is prepared to tax the rich to protect the poor; the right-winger prefers to give the rich untrammelled opportunities to become richer, even though the poor will end up as 'collateral damage'; the fascist may actively seek to destroy or punish the poor, who are seen as deserving their fate by being unfit or lazy.

'Strong' and 'weak' often do translate simply into 'rich' and 'poor'; but 'strong' can also mean physically strong; well-connected; a member of the majority ethnic or religious group in the society; better armed - etc.

War, which decides issues on the basis of 'who is strongest', not 'whose cause is more just', is perhaps the ultimate right-wing activity.

Perhaps my signature line says it best: it's the distinction between 'the iron fist' and 'the helping hand'.

[mmonk]

28. There hasn't been liberal policy since probably Johnson or Nixon.

[Winterblues]

29. Making condoms available to teens and passing out needles to addicts.

Those are policies that help keep disease from spreading but Conservatives only think of punishment and sex.