The Failure Of English To Distinguish Between Different Things Helps Conmen Of The Republican-fascist Kind

Since my reading of Marilynne Robinson clarified it for me, I've mentioned that there are two very different meanings to the word "liberal," the differences in which produce entirely different results in terms of the common good.

As she pointed out, in terms of political economy, the original meaning of "liberal" is tied in to it use in the Geneva Bible and its commentary, the Bible most in use in New England and some other places in the formative period of the country.  That meaning was absolutely tied to providing the material and spiritual needs of the destitute, the poor, the ones Jesus and the Jewish scriptures commanded us to provide for.  That was the foundation of the American liberal tradition that produced the aspiration for egalitarian democracy.

The other meaning came later, in the 18th century "enlightenment" of Locke (the friend of the rich and propertied) and Voltaire (antisemite and racist that he was) and others which concentrated on lassiez-faire economics, allowing the propertied to enjoy their property without restrictions by the government. I'll point out in passing that such propertied people owned their property through the force of the government, itself, a basic defect in their theory.  Their possession of it is a matter of government regulation.  But they don't like to notice that. Such "liberalism"  wanted to free the rising middle-class and newly enriched and really had little to no regard for the destitute, the widow or orphan or stranger living among them - except in so far as they had money.  That is the liberalism of way too many of the slave-owning, banking and merchant Founders, who, if you read the accounts of the framing of the Constitution and its adoption and the early years of the country under it, had everything from mild opposition to strong opposition and general disdain for those who kept with the original meaning of liberalism.

I'll repeat that, every single thing about such propertied people holding their property, in many cases their ability to amass it and use it for their own ends instead of the general good is a result of the government making that possible as much as the "government regulation" they rail is a violation of their "freedom".  

Freedom is a word that is at least as varied in its meaning and not all freedom is good for the common good.   It certainly won't be news to any except the most unreflective and clueless that freedom can be dangerous to other other people, to society, to the biosphere and even to the people who exercise such freedom.  You'd think that people would realize that about the word though I suspect it will come as a surprise to have it pointed out.

Such "freedom" is the "freedom" that is invoked by Republican-fascists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, lazy slacker Incel losers, the jerk who insists on playing their music loud while everyone's trying to sleep, the creep who pollutes the air with their tobacco smoke or billowing smoke stacks, the coal and other extraction industries, . . . . pretty much all of the major beneficiaries of the late 18th century style of "enlightenment" laissez-faire liberalism in the Lockean tradition.   The kind of people the Federalist-fascist society serves.  

When I mentioned the other day the difference between the freedom to do whatever pleased you no matter the consequences and the freedom to determine how to live a moral life, I realized it was totally unsurprising that those two different forms of freedom have such different characters.  It's the difference between acting like a selfish piece of crap and like a generous person.  That difference has such consequences for those around such people that it is absurd that the law and judicial practice doesn't much distinguish between those two things - I suspect the lawyers and judges, mostly being from the economic elite or aspiring to join it, find it quite convenient to pretend not to be able to discern and articulate that difference, at least when it suits them and their class.  As I've pointed out, they pretend to not be able to discern or process the difference between blatant lies and the truth - unless it is in service of the disposition of money and property.  When it's a mere matter of promoting the most seriously destructive forms and degrees of inequality among mere human beings, of the destruction of he biosphere, they play stupid.  They're taught to by their elite educations, the more elite the university, the more likley they're taught to play stupid in that way.  

I think the difference among those liberalisms, of those different freedoms is so profound in their consequences and the use of single words for both of them that the interval of ignorance of those differences is, itself, extremely useful to con artists, crooks and fascists.  I think we need to come up with and force terminology that makes that distinction or enough people will be suckered by, especially, "freedom" talk that it will bring us to fascism.   We don't have much to fear of it bringing Marxist dictatorship - as if there's any real difference- but America is not only vulnerable to fascism, the kind that has ruled our country in the period of legal slavery and the long and lingering period of its de facto presence - what the Republicans on the Supreme Court are doing everything they can to bring back, Clarence Thomas one of the most enthusiastic in pushing things back - that that is the real danger.  

Marxists discrediting traditional American style liberals is a problem of liberalism but it's not as if there's any chance they will succeed.  We've had a century of seeing what Marxism becomes in reality.  While I doubt that's why Marx declared himself to not be a Marxist, it's clear that Marxism is always a disaster.  They're a tool of the fascists to destroy egalitarian democracy.