Talk:Cultural liberalism

Are cultural liberalism and cultural libertarianism the same concept?

St. claires fire (talk) 00:22, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I do not think so. For example, some Libertarians would allow slavery, on the grounds that a slave is property, and property rights are paramount. A cultural liberal would oppose slavery. A less extreme example would be Milton Freedman's libertarian support of segregation, based on the claim that the federal government had no right to interfere with traditions of the Southern states. The cultural liberals opposed segregation. A third example would be affirmative action, which libertarians usually oppose, which cultural liberals usually support. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if you're doing it to be provocative or just speaking in ignorance, but no libertarian justifies slavery because property rights are paramount because property rights are not paramount in libertarian philosophy. Property rights, according to libertarians, are a derivative of life and liberty. And the libertarian philosophy of societal interaction is governed by the Non-aggression principle, which forbids involuntary servitude. There is a debate between libertarian philosophers about whether or not one can voluntarily sell himself into slavery but the general opinion is that it isn't possible under the common meaning of the word "slave" because the contract would be unenforceable and the "slave" could end it at will. Those who argue that one can sell himself into slavery apply strong limitations, such as a for fraction of all future earnings. But there is absolutely, unequivocally, no justification within libertarian theory for permanent involuntary servitude.

I was not familiar with Milton Friedman's segregation stance, but a quick google search seems it is not as you describe. What you describe is a federalist position, not a libertarian one. No government has "rights" under libertarian philosophy. Only people have rights. An owner of a pair of drinking fountains could require racial segregation for their use but, to a libertarian, it would both be wrong for the federal government to require that they not be segregated and also wrong for a state government to require that they were segregated. And that seems to have been Friedman's position. Friedman appears to have more strongly opposed southern segregation on a personal level. Friedman (who was Jewish) at one point likened Southern Jim Crow laws to Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. AJPEG (talk) 18:35, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

In fairness, you're speaking from a strictly modern point of view. There definitely were people in 1860 in the American South, whom we would today most properly categorize as Libertarian, who did justify slavery on exactly the grounds that Rick Norwood stated: slaves are not people, and as such, rights-based theory simply doesn't apply to them. They are exempt; they cannot have rights in the same way that your kitchen table cannot have rights, and thus you can no more abrogate the prerogatives of your slave than you can those of your kitchen table by the manner in which you serve a meal on it. If you are seriously denying this, then I'm afraid that you are the one speaking out of ignorance.

By the same token, most modern theologians would probably say that modern interpretations of Christianity do not permit slavery -- and yet, the fact remains that, in 1860, there were legions of Southerners who called themselves Christians, and which any objective observer could only call Christian, who fought and died to try to preserve slavery. They loved the institution so much that they spent their lifeblood to save it, unto the failing of their mortal strength.

Social norms change, and with them, so do the definitions of philosophical abstractions. "Libertarianism" is no exception. It's futile to pretend that the definitions that we use today are the only definitions that have ever prevailed. PhilHudson82 (talk) 15:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, and so is Civil libertarianism and Social Liberalism. The entire Social Liberalism article on Wikipedia, is incorrect, and instead refers to Egalitarianism. My suggestion is re-naming this article "Social Liberalism" and merging in the few social liberalism points from the existing "Social Liberalism" article, and renaming the existing "Social Liberalism" article as "Social Egalitarianism" or merging it with the "Egalitarianism" Page. The "Civil Libertarianism" article should also be merged into here under the new title "Social Liberalism".

Rick Norwood is fundamentally wrong on all of his statements. AJinNYC2112 (talk) 11:27, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

As I mentioned over in the talk page for Social Liberalism, if you want to make fundamental changes in an article, you need a reliable source, not just a strong opinion. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:17, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

No. Modern cultural liberalism includes ideas like Identity politics which clearly contradict the individualist idea, which is crucial for libertarianism. Cultural libertarianism (if this term is used in literature) would always priorize the individual over any group identity (or generally reject the concept of Identity politics itself), which modern cultural liberalism often does not. --89.182.202.145 (talk) 12:01, 31 May 2024 (UTC)