Posted on 08/18/2009 9:00:22 PM PDT by Julia H.
Maybe I'm reading too deeply into things as usual, but at least someone here is bound to find this as interesting and mildly irritating as I do. Look at the nature of the synonyms Thesaurus.com gives for "conservative" versus those it gives for "liberal."
LIBERAL Main Entry: liberal Part of Speech: adjective Definition: progressive Synonyms: advanced, avant-garde, broad, broad-minded, catholic, enlightened, flexible, free, general, high-minded, humanistic, humanitarian, indulgent, intelligent, interested, latitudinarian, left, lenient, libertarian, loose, magnanimous, permissive, radical, rational, reasonable, receiving, receptive, reformist, tolerant, unbiased, unbigoted, unconventional, understanding, unorthodox, unprejudiced
Antonyms: conservative, narrow, narrow-minded
CONSERVATIVE Main Entry: conservative Part of Speech: adjective Definition: cautious, moderate, tending to preserve the status quo Synonyms: Tory, bourgeois, constant, controlled, conventional, die-hard, fearful, firm, fogyish, fuddy-duddy, guarded, hard hat, hidebound, holding to, illiberal, in a rut, inflexible, middle-of-the-road, not extreme, obstinate, old guard, old line, orthodox, quiet, reactionary, redneck, right, right of center, right-wing, sober, stable, steady, timid, traditional, traditionalistic, unchangeable, unchanging, uncreative, undaring, unimaginative, unprogressive, white bread Antonyms: exaggerated, incautious, left-wing, liberal, progressive, radical
Boys and girls, if you remember nothing else from today's lesson: to be liberal is to be generous, caring, creative, and hip. To be conservative is to be a bigoted, cowardly, frumpy old loser. Class dismissed!
The people who call themselves liberal today are anything but...
Are we looking at the 19th or 20th cent. definitions?
LOL You forgot to give a ‘barf’ alert!
Liberal; too much or unwanted; John went into the wrong part of town and ended up with a liberal dose of the clap.
Thanks for posting.
Who is the publisher?
nevermind. Sorry.
It’s at thesaurus.com, which is owned by dictionary.com.
Maybe you are reading too far into it - for example, liberal does mean ‘generous’, but in a context like “I put a liberal amount of butter on my popcorn”. If they were saying Liberal (capital L, referring specifically to the American political party) meant ‘generous’, then I’d have more of an objection.
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