i’ve changed the name of this website to democraticmediaplease.net, to be more clearly descriptive of what i am pushing for, and to avoid the term “liberal”, which just seems to upset and confuse many people these days.
i also dropped the word ‘global’ because it’s hardly necessary to remind people in 2016 that we live in a highly integrated global system that can only be corrected through a collaborative global effort (or is it?… anyway… it’s dropped, tldr).
“liberalism” is a concept global justice advocates seem to have abandoned to the capitalist profiteers — the present world-wide triumph of ‘neo-liberalism’ apparently means the new freedom (liberalism) is unbridled capitalism, and we all accept this.
the term “liberal” is now primarily used as an insult for highly-“educated” and materially-well-off capitalist apologists (who claim to be all for human rights and global justice while really acting to defend the structural injustice which rewards them handsomly).
the concept of democracy is also scoffed at by many of those (“radicals”) that want true global justice and political equality (i.e. democracy) — both democracy and liberalism are terms that capitalism has abused and claims ownership of, but i don’t believe the concept of true democracy has been fully abandoned by the “left” like the concept of liberalism has been….. well i’m not giving up on the term democracy yet anyway.
the meaning of the concepts ‘liberal’, ‘liberty’ & ‘liberalism’ (free, freedom & freedomism) is always up for contestation — and these concepts, conceived of properly, should only be a threat to global capitalism’s political and economic domination.
liberalism to me is just the idea of creating a system that delivers the greatest set of freedoms to each individual that is compatable with a similar set of freedoms for all others — that’s a john rawls-ish definition of liberalism, except i emphatically reject john rawls’ ridiculous exclusion of property rights from consideration in the liberal balancing act.
i think most concepts of global politics pushed for by global justice advocates (even those ‘wacky’ anti-state anarchists) are really just non-crusty-old-white-conservative (i.e. truer) visions of liberalism.
a common derision of liberalism is that it is a doctrine first advanced by slave-owning, mysoginist, racist, white arseholes and nothing has changed ever since, or ever can.
i’m sure many early writers on the idea of democracy were also slave-owning, classist, racist, mysogynist arseholes — but i don’t think that means we should give up on the concept of democracy just because it wasn’t first conceived in absolute purity (conditions which can never exist on earth).
these semantic surrenders to the truth-making power of late capitalism give me the shits a bit — i think that rather than abandoning terms, in a never-ending rebranding of freedom™ and equality®, we should just fight for the true meaning of the concepts now shat all over by late capitalism while it claims to be for them.
the concepts of true liberalism and democracy (when all people worldwide are considered politically equal, as they must be) are enough to necessitate a global political revolution — instead we seem to be accepting the ridiculous lie that liberal democracy and integrated world capitalism are the same thing.
i can’t believe at university they made me write a essay on how liberalism and democracy are in conflict — they aren’t, both ideas imply the other and rely on each other — what’s really in conflict is liberal democracy and capitalism, but we couldn’t go asking students to have productive thoughts like that in a university could we? left-wing bias much? all reasonable analysis that leads to uptake of ‘left-wing’ opinion must be eradicated from our learning institutions, in the interests of fair and balanced learning.
anyway…… it seems i’ve got to accept that ‘liberal’, ‘liberty’ and ‘liberalism’ are on everyone’s shit-list — and there’s nothing i can do about it except change the name of my website, and have a bit of a rant about it.
i can’t think of a better single-word description of the global media system we need than democratic: aware of the political equality of individuals and aimed at the ever-increasing autonomy and self-governance of the global population.
what else could i say? independent? independent of what? any guiding ideology and vision of freedom and the democracy we need to bring that about?
truth is, i’ll hate the name of my website no matter what i call it.
yours sincerely,
a true liberal democrat,
kyle magee a.d.m.s.(p) (advocate for democratic media systems (professional))
p.s. fuck words and everyone who uses them.
