Why couldn't a liberal believe in socialized medicine? I say dump the labels and be true to your beliefs.

A liberal is someone with an open mind who is interested in making America and the world a better place by reforming old ways of thinking.

Liberal simply means "broad" or "progressive," hence the language of a "liberal education" or a "liberal viewpoint," respectively.

A liberal is someone who believes that people should be allowed to do whatever they want provided they do not harm other people. Many liberals are also socialists, in that they believe that everybody has a duty to contribute to a society that helps all its members - but they do not have to be. Liberals who are not socialists are often known as libertarians.

Great Question, +5. Liberal means forward looking, willing to try new solutions to problems that don't resolve well using traditional approaches. Conservative means holding to traditional approaches and always preferring a tried-and-true method in solving problems. The best governance usually comes from a mix of tried-and-true approaches to traditional problems and forward thinking applied to new challenges and old problems which don't seem to resolve when old solutions are applied.

A very easy way to differentiate liberals and conservatives is with this measure: Conservatives favor the individual over the group. Liberals favor the group over the individual.

(Wikipedia) Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophies that considers individual liberty and equality to be the most important political goals. Liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. Within liberalism, there are various streams of thought which compete over the use of the term "liberal" and may propose very different policies, but they are generally united by their support for constitutional liberalism, which encompasses support for: freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, an individual's right to private property, and a transparent system of government. All liberals, as well as some adherents of other political ideologies, support some variant of the form of government known as liberal democracy, with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law.

A person who supports a progressive government and human and civil rights, including social reform and equal opportunities.

All non-proper names are labels. Actually, even the proper names are labels too! All words are labels, in that they are substitutes for the thing itself... handles, if you will... representations which substitute for some referent. The word "label" is itself a label, of course. So what the heck are we talking about when we say "don't label me"? The issue is one of failing to account for the distortions introduced by substituting a concept for reality, and also over-generalizing. That's "labeling" as a semantic malfunction. So "liberal" is a category of viewpoints which can be loosely defined in terms of other categories, and one can write a book about the details of the meanings of all the categories, and the book will be full of labels. But, the more detail is added, the less the book will be over-generalizing. And the more variations on the theme are included, the less one will be substituting abstractions for specifics. The real problem with concepts -- and it IS a really, really big problem -- is that we don't understand them well. We don't understand the distortions they introduce as soon as they show up in any form whatsoever. While we cannot dispense with concepts and still function, we can be alert to their nature and appropriately limit the trust we give them. That's how one avoids falling into 'labeling traps'.

Well, there is the traditional definition of Liberal, then there's the corrupted, modern definition. Originally, a Liberal wanted freedom for the individual. He recognized that the purpose of gov't is to take people's rights away. But today, Liberals think gov't is the answer to the human condition. And that they know better what is best for us than we do.

Liberal in Politics has several meanings depending on the country, for the United States: * One who supports social liberalism * Liberalism, a political ideology that seeks to maximize individual liberties. Within liberalism are competing schools of thought, in general they are: o Classical liberalism o Social liberalism * Modern American liberalism in the United States * Political progressivism, a political ideology that is for change, often associated with liberal movements. Regards.