Once again, I'm curious as to how you see me.

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

[Poll #290860]

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

What is lily-livered please? :-)
Fascinated by it.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I always thought it should be good to have a lily liver. I mean lilies are, well, good things. Consider the lilies, and all that, nice flowers and so on. Like a heart being a rose, or something. I'll shut up now, :).

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure it isn't a good thing. Certainly, I get annoyed at being called a liberal without the qualifier.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

It means oerly soft; a 'lily-livered liberal' is pretty much the same as 'bleeding heart liberal'.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Not sure anyone can be considered self-sufficient if they buy food from shops. Similarly, independent of what?

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I don't mind being called a liberal... except perhaps that people here mean it as an insult. I'm not sure it's an exact description of my politics, but it's not a million miles away.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

In my mind it means the same as 'Neo-liberal', so it's not only insulting, but also wildly far right of my actual position.

[cjwatson]

My instinctive feeling is that you manage to be a reactionary liberal, actually, although I'm not quite sure how. My answer doesn't reflect that because I got confused at the concept :)

Similarly, I got confused at "self-sufficient" and "independent", because while I don't think you're either of those in many ways I couldn't put you as entirely dependent either ...

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Oh... I didn't/don't associate "liberal" with a left/right position. It seems to run all the way from anarchism on the left to libertarianism on the right... just the opposite of "authoritarian", really. I hadn't come across the term "neo-liberal".

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

"Reactionary Liberal" sounds like Whig to me, which is roughly what my position is. The word "liberal" has wildly divergent meanings in the UK, Europe, US and Australia, so it's probably not a very useful qualifier. The best way of working out what sort of liberal someone is is to find out where they get their ideology feed from. Or do Chris Lightfoot's statistically sound political survey.

("By 'radicalise', I mean 'convert into reactionary apologists for the status quo'" - mk270)

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

That's what it would sound like to me, except on further hand-waving type conversations with Col, I'm not sure that that is what he means. I think he means an unreconstructed old-style socialist, with interests in personal freedoms. Which is more-or-less me.

[cjwatson]

I have difficulty matching ghoti up with Whig, so I'm not sure that's accurate. I was attempting to describe somebody who fits the modern/fluffy definition of liberal as freedom-lover (rather than progressive) together with the small-c-conservative nature of tending to prefer the status quo. However, judging by the difficulty I had trying to make this make sense in conversation with ghoti, I'm not sure it was a very useful description ...

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

Only one ticky box from me, because I really don't know anything about the rest. And I misunderstood the poll, I think, looking at the rest of the discussion - I didn't twig this was a politics one. No offence intended at calling you liberal :-)

[kyte.livejournal.com]

Well I said 'yes' to the things that sounded nice :>

Lily-livered is usually an insult! And 'liberal' means (to me) unbigoted and free-thinking :>

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I wasn't entirely thinking politics when I made the poll, only for 'liberal, tbh.