A city wide blackout at Thu, 04 Mar 2004 19:44:43 GMT did not prevent Gunner
from posting to rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 19:20:11 +0100, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
wrote:

"A.Gent" writes:

"Liberal" to me means right-wing, conservative. (Aussies will
understand).

Europeans will, too. The Americans had to invent "libertarian" to
replace "liberal" after they changed the meaning of that word...

Language is fun! :-)

-tih

Ah..no. Libertarian is a completly different term
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/dgwlib.html#Liberals

Why do libertarians sometimes call themselves classical liberals?
In the 19th century, the term "liberal" generally meant someone who
favored individual liberty and opposed the expansion of state power.
In Europe and in much of the rest of the world, it still means that.

But in America, the term "liberal" was adopted by people who favored
extensive government intervention in the economy -- people who
elsewhere in the world would have been called progressives, social
democrats, or socialists.

Meanwhile, "conservative" continued to refer to people who favored
the use of state power for the preservation of certain religious and
cultural practices. The original liberals were thus left without a
label. People who still cleave to the ideal of individual liberty in
all spheres of life, like the 19th century liberals, now usually call
themselves either libertarians or classical liberals.

In my humble observation on the political scene, the "conservatives" who
want to use Government Force to enforce their version of morality are merely
those realists who recognized back in the 60s and 70s that "moral" decisions
were going to be dictated from the Capital, and it behooved them to get Their
People elected in order to make sure the Correct Polices were implemented.
And the "liberals" have discovered that it sucks to be on the outside looking
in while Important Decisions are being made.

And having lost the legislature, they've run out of patience and are hoping
to get their utopian plans implemented by judicial fiat.

I guess they haven't figured out that if one judge can set a law aside, so
can another.

--
pyotr filipivich
Next Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them, Selecting a new Them