You Keep Using That Word/Very Pedantic: Difference between revisions

** It doesn't help that different U.S. government agencies use different definitions -- sometimes excluding Spanish people, sometimes not, sometimes including Brazilians and Portuguese, sometimes only Brazilians ...

** It would be more accurate to say "Hispanic is what people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race, are called in the U.S." People in Latin America don't think of themselves as being "Hispanic" most of the time, although they may acknowledge some degree of shared culture.

** "Conservative" and "Liberal" have come to mean very different things than when the terms were more or less established in the French revolution; ''les conservateurs'' were those opposed to the social ideals of the revolution and wanted to "conserve" the monarchy -- and, incidentally, sat on the right wing of the French parliamentary chamber -- while ''les libéraux'' were those intent on "liberating" the people from monarchic rule. In the past few decades, conservatives have been more about binding personal liberties ("conserving" the social order) while disestablishing the state ("liberating" people -- in theory, anyway -- from rulership), while the liberal side of the equation seems to maintain its intent to open up social freedoms while maintaining (or even ''increasing'') the role of the state. This is then the problem with defining a multi-dimensional question on a simple left/right axis.

*** [[wikipedia:Classical liberalism|''Classical'' liberalism]], interestingly, is a political philosophy in which the freedom of the individual person is prized over all other ideals -- however, the freedom of any individual stops at the point where it begins to infringe upon the freedom of ''other'' individuals ("liberal" still has this sense in mainland Europe; in North America "libertarian" is closer, though not quite synonymous). How this intersects with the modern Anglosphere's liberal paradigm, which favors increasing safety regulations (up to and including seat-belt laws), is an interesting question.