I get that by comparison classical liberal seems conservative these days, which shows how extreme the left has become.

I'm not sure where Trevor got that idea, it seems relatively arbitrary. But an absurd man hawking insidious ideas to stupid people could certainly be quite influential

classical liberal is charlie baker republican

it's equivalent to modern center right conservatism

Yeppppp

This is seriously not a point that needs to be debated. If you want to call yourself a "classical liberal" because you don't want to be associated with the hogs who hoot and oink for Trump, fine, whatever. But it's objectively a right-wing position.

“Classical Liberal” just means “Alt Right” because the alt right doesn’t like that term.

I mean Conservative Republicans favor big government, redistributing wealth towards those who already have more wealth, and somewhat free markets as long as they protect those who are already in power, so I'm not sure there is a camp for people who believe in markets that are mostly free in a meaningful way and small government.

Also, people who are on the more extreme edges of the political spectrum very often refer to themselves with terms that portray them as closer to the center, to make their views seem more reasonable and attractive to people in the middle.

Doesn't the alt right love that term? This is most certainly not true. Alt right is very anti-free market and quite nationalist. Classical liberals are neither of those things.

They can both be wrong or evil or stupid, and you can even say the distinctions aren't meaningful, but they're not the same.

Ah yes, if only there were an alternative right...

Here is the entirety of my knowledge about JP:

1. In both clips I’ve watched of him speaking, he mistakes the word “divulge” for “diverge” (“we divulged from lobsters”). This is embarrassing.

2. He tries to make complex relationships sound simple or directly causal, like ignoring that serotonin (or its absence) has varied and sometimes contradictory effects in people, or misrepresenting both our relationship to lobsters (Christ am I even writing this) and what conclusions can reasonably drawn about humans from observed invertebrate behaviors. The difference between using an observation about serotonin’s influence on invertebrate social behaviors to inspire carefully constructed human research and using it to draw direct conclusions about how people should live is the difference between being scientific and being a snake oil self-help book wanker.

3. He writes self help books.

4. For a man with a psychology background, he seems absolutely awash in hostile attribution bias. I didn’t hear him speak of a single group or person he disagreed with, without falling prey to this very easily spotted bias type that every undergraduate psych major is aware of.

Whether or not he has broader intelligent arguments to offer, I was struck more in my 15 minutes of watching him talk by what he seemed not to know (or opted to avoid acknowledging) than I was by what he did know.

Got me. The racist protect our borders and make everything in America crowd is exactly the same as the open borders free trade smaller government everything crowd.

To be fair, they both voted for Trump.

I mean...okay? So the alt-right and "classical liberals" are the same thing because they're both extremists that have given themselves centrist sounding labels?

I was going to ask if classical liberalism is really "extreme" to begin with, but since it's being defined here as the same as the alt-right, I guess it is.

I don't think alt-right and classical liberal mean the same thing. But they are both right-wing positions.

I do, for the record, think Chud is right about the tendency to obscure how extreme you are with uncommon descriptors, but a better example would be (I think) Steve Bannon's "economic nationalism"

If they did then I'm with you. Those are closet conservatives. There are probably a lot of them. But I think there are people who hold "classical liberal" values, and those people should not have voted for Trump. There are plenty of these types have been every bit as critical of Trump, if not more so, as they were of Obama. Again, they might be stupid and wrong, but a classical liberal is not the same as an alt-righter.

I'm not arguing with you. You're right on the definitions.

I've just noticed, mostly through working on conservative AM radio, that people who are clearly alt right in their views paint themselves in terminology that makes you think they're more classical liberal or traditional center right. And I think that leads to people like LV thinking the two are closer in ideology than they really are.

You're right, they shouldn't have voted for Trump. But the emails...

They are all shitheads who deserve to be exterminated, so what’s the difference