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Originally Posted by balefire88
My understanding has always been that those who opposed slavery were the liberal thinkers of those days, and the socially conservative thinkers, especially in the South, were against abolishing slavery.
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I really don't understand what you mean when you say that your "understanding" of liberal and conservative implies that slavery is conservative and emancipation is liberal. Are you working from some kind of established definitions of liberal and conservative? If so, what are they and how do they show slavery to be "conservative"?
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Originally Posted by balefire88
In the 1920s, conservative thinkers championed lassiez-faire, where as, in the aftermath of the Russian revoltuion, liberalism was more openly linked with "collectivism". The New Deal was a shift toward more governemtn programs and more liberal thinking. FDR was a liberal.
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Again, what definition of liberal are you using here? It seems to be heavily related to people's self-perception and self-application of the label, which would make your assertions somewhat trivial.
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Originally Posted by balefire88
1)Over the past three centuries, "liberalism" and "conservatism" have in some ways exchanged positions...Two old words now took on new meaning. "Liberal" no longer referred to classical liberalism but now meant a supporter of the New Deal; conservative meant an opponent... Seriously, if you think the New Deal was a "conservative" victory, because the classical definition says so, then sure, you are correct. But you are also living in the wrong century.
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So, you admit that the definition of "liberal" has changed essentially completely from what it used to be. Yet, if you remember your original post:
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Originally Posted by balefire88
The theory: "overall, Liberals have been mostly winning through out American History, atleast in the long term"...
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How is it even possible for "liberals" to win "through out (sic) American History" if "liberal" means something completely different from what it meant towards the beginning of American history?
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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