Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
I'm not onboard with that terminology. Liberal =/= leftist.
Classical liberal economic thought supports the breaking down of barriers to trade to allow the free flow of capital and goods. Canadians are largely onboard with that. They don't want to dial back the clock to the 1970s, when everything from telephone companies to utilities were government owned, costly, and inefficient, and when it took years for goods and services available in the U.S. to make it to Canada. Most Canadians work in the private sector, and want to encourage a business environment that supports entrepreneurship and small business.
Socially liberal means allowing citizens the greatest latitude on personal liberty and private behaviour without endangering other people's freedoms. Canada is a very liberal society, and getting moreso all the time.
Those two belief systems are not contradictory at all. You're talking about leftist dogma, which is more authoritarian than liberalism. We don't talk much about the cleavages between leftist and liberal thought in this country, because the two have been uneasy allies against conservatism for a long time, so those cleavages are glossed over. However, now that conservatism is a dying political credo, the differences between liberalism and leftist politics will become more clear.
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That's a good point and I actually meant to expand on that in the first post. You're right that liberalism and progressivism aren't the same thing. I'd also argue that social liberalism is not effective for addressing inequality, largely due to the fact that it embraces the concept of negative rights as opposed to positive rights. There is some good literature on the nature of Charter challenges and the fact that the ones that succeed are very rarely the types that propose some form redistribution or reparation.