And as far as being a 'stubborn conservative', if I have no idea what a liberal is how can you expect me to be a conservative? Truly, I don't know what I am, I have no political affiliations, and I don't vote. My interests aren't being represented by anyone. I am intrigued by the 'Far Right', but, outside of those purile Neo-Nazi groups, I've seen no evidence of it in American culture. I'm certainly stubborn, though, and proud of it.

it's ok to be biased and chauvinistic, so long as it isn't in the context of covertness? beautiful rationale, neglectedfield

suggesting that liberals are part of a conspiracy to breach and undermine academia sounds so ridiculous and paranoid.

perhaps their academic ubiquity is an exemplary of intelligence on the center-left wing. never mind, I'm sure they advertently mobilized to spite the right by impeding intellectual provocation.

I never said that. I just think that if Fox's chauvinism and bias are made a big deal out of, then liberal academic bias should be as well.

American Enterprise Institute's magazine published a survey of voter
registration among humanities and social-science faculty members several years
ago. More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green
party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that
diversity and pluralism abound in higher education

For me it's not the fact that it is left-liberal that is the predominating discourse but the fact that one predominates to begin with, that there is any bias, because I love no holds barred political debate.

gosh, I love polarized, black and white, dichotomy-politics. you're either with us, or you're not!

if we're going to agree, or at least assume the American intellectual community is predominated by liberals, can we assume that American media is overwhelmingly predominated by neoconservatives, and persons that attribute at least a conservative/republican epithet to themselves?

I believe that is the case. Generally expressed, both academia and media are dominated by statists. The intellectual community is predominately "liberal"/welfarist whilst the media is predominately "conservative"/corporatist. (This has been shown by studies--not just anecdotal evidence--but I don't care to search for them now. The studies themselves probably have their own biases too, though.)

Generally expressed, both academia and media are dominated by statists.

Not surprising... when was the last time Anarchism was popular in the United States?

I have this question for a lot of time now. When I am talking with conservatives or nationalists from the US I often see the term "liberalism" being lumped within the general "leftist" spectrum. How can this happen? From what I know liberalism is a capitalist (aka "right-wing") ideology. What has capitalism has to do with "leftism"?

Here are my political views. I am very much a liberal in the social sense. In other words, I'm pro-abortion rights, pro-gay marriage, etc, etc, etc. I also lean a little to the left in terms of economics - I'm for capitalism, but I'm also for restrictions on companies in certain areas - child labor is bad and a minimum wage is good. I also think that the government should provide some measure of help to the poor and disadvantaged.

My question is - am I a liberal?

I have this question for a lot of time now. When I am talking with conservatives or nationalists from the US I often see the term "liberalism" being lumped within the general "leftist" spectrum. How can this happen? From what I know liberalism is a capitalist (aka "right-wing") ideology. What has capitalism has to do with "leftism"?

That's because liberals are not so conservative as nationalists. Both liberals and nationalists (and Democrats and Republicans) are conservatives. Liberalism is a right-wing/capitalist ideology. It has nothing to do with the Left. It's just that nationalists are more conservatives than liberals.

Sorry, thats completely wrong.
Read the post I wrote above.

Our founding fathers were true Liberals.

Liberals these days are pretty much Marxist-Lite.

First line true.
Second line not.
Most of us are liberals in one way or another.

I agree that liberals are mostly optimistic about the human nature and the society and that they expect from a state to help the poor and that separates them from the nationalists, but liberalism isn't an ideology that wants the change of the modern politico-economical system. What I want to say is that liberals do not want to change the way decisions are made in a country (parliament) nowadays, neither they want the change of the modern economical system (capitalism). Both liberals and nationalists want the way decisions are made in a state (representative democracy) and the way the goods are produced (capitalist economy) to remain the same. That's why I believe that liberalism is a right-wing ideology, and that's what they have in common with the nationalists. If you live in the USA, where the conservative ideas about the wickedness of the human nature dominate, or in an islamic state somewhere in the Middle East, where there's no democracy at all, liberal ideas will sound leftist. But, if you live in a country where 300 politicians decide for about 10.000.000 citizens (such as in Greece), and where the boss of a business takes a very bigger salary than his workers (although he's working less), these ideas will sound conservative. And as far as I know liberalism isn't only about optimism for the human nature and society.
Correct me if I am wrong.

Liberalism DOES have in common with nationalism, but so does conservatism and socialism.

What does conservatism has in common with socialism?

I have this question for a lot of time now. When I am talking with conservatives or nationalists from the US I often see the term "liberalism" being lumped within the general "leftist" spectrum. How can this happen? From what I know liberalism is a capitalist (aka "right-wing") ideology. What has capitalism has to do with "leftism"?

What has come to be known as 'new', 'revisionist', 'welfare state', or perhaps best, 'social justice', liberalism challenges this intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property based market order. Three factors help explain the rise of this revisionist theory. First, the new liberalism arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which the ability of a free market to sustain what Lord Beveridge called a 'prosperous equilibrium' was being questioned. Believing that a private property based market tended to be unstable, or could, as Keynes argued, get stuck in an equilibrium with high unemployment, new liberals came to doubt that it was an adequate foundation for a stable, free society. Here the second factor comes into play: just as the new liberals were losing faith in the market, their faith in government as a means of supervising economic life was increasing. This was partly due to the experiences of the First World War, in which government attempts at economic planning seemed to succeed; more importantly, this reevaluation of the state was spurred by the democratization of western states, and the conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could truly be, in J.A. Hobson's phrase 'representatives of the community'. As D.G. Ritchie proclaimed:The third factor underlying the development of the new liberalism was probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from being 'the guardian of every other right', property rights generated an unjust inequality of power that led to a less-than-equal liberty (typically, 'positive liberty') for the working class. This theme is central to what is usually called 'liberalism' in American politics, combining a strong endorsement of civil and personal liberties with, at best, an indifference, and often enough an antipathy, to private ownership. The seeds of this newer liberalism can be found in Mill's On Liberty. Although Mill insisted that the 'so-called doctrine of Free Trade' rested on 'equally solid' grounds as did the 'principle of individual liberty', he nevertheless insisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty were distinct. And in his Principles of Political Economy Mill consistently emphasized that it is an open question whether personal liberty can flourish without private property, a view that Rawls was to reassert over a century later.

(Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liber ... bBetOldNew.)

What does conservatism has in common with socialism?

In America, the term 'liberalism' is used to refer to the big government welfare state, whereas in parts of Europe it is used to refer to classical liberalism. In the US, classical liberalism is known primarily as libertarianism.

Huh? I concider myself Libertarian, because I believe in little government intervention, and more rights! In America Libertarians are on the total opposite side of teh spectrum as Liberals. So how are they the same in Europe? I'm not very familiar with European Politics.

I have this question for a lot of time now. When I am talking with conservatives or nationalists from the US I often see the term "liberalism" being lumped within the general "leftist" spectrum. How can this happen? From what I know liberalism is a capitalist (aka "right-wing") ideology. What has capitalism has to do with "leftism"?

Liberalism is completely different from libertarianism.

The chairman of the German liberal party "FDP" is gay, now if THAT isn't liberal....

False. Despite the many flavours of libertarianism, from minarchism to anarcho-capitalism (and maybe even to the arch-cranky Neo-Tech/Zonpower), they are all roughly identifiable with classical liberalism. Read the excerpt I provided, earlier in this thread, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.