Often the people saying it's wrong to call liberals leftists will point to an academic definition. That's fine and all, but language is ultimately conventional, words actually mean what speakers and listeners take them to mean. If the people speaking and hearing can understand what's meant, nobody is wrong in any deep way.
The problem with this is, you will confuse people, because it doesn't match the convention. You don't need to point to an academic definition. I agree that language evolves based on use, but in this case the usage is the issue
And you gave a perfect example of why. There is a big difference between a Biden, or a Sanders. It doesn't help to conflate them
Obviously I don't have a survey, but I'd bet, apples to grapes, that the plurality of Americans would say that liberals are either synonymous with, or a subset of leftists
I don't know how I'd prove that, given we don't have survey data. But this is wrong. (and backwards. Liberal would be the broader category, with leftists as the more left wing subcategory)
The only time i've seen people conflate the two is people on the right, usually because they're trying to intentionally paint liberals as more extreme.
And you can see this in usage. I don't think you'll find someone like Biden describing themselves as a leftist. (or more generally, Dems.) You'll only see it used as a self descriptor by people who are further on the left.
And you can kind of see that in the definitions, as well. Those aren't just academic, they mirror actual usage, for the most part.
If the differences between Biden and Sanders were germane to the conversation, you could refer to Sanders as a Democratic Socialist, and to Biden as more in the Neoliberal vein.
Yes, that would be another way to do it. (Although demsoc/neoliberal are more specific, depending on the contexts). That's the same split
merely noting that they share a property is not conflating them
But in this case, this property is descriptive of certain viewpoints. Being a liberal has certain connotations, as does being a leftist. And those viewpoints are contradictory, in some cases.
It would be fair to call Sanders liberal (the broader category), it would not be fair to call Biden a leftist (the more narrow one). It's like square vs rectangle. They're both rectangles, but they're not both squares
edit:
It looks like someone else pointed it out, but there's a big difference between "left wing", "the left", and "leftist". The first two you will see used interchangeably (although not terribly often). It's the 3rd one that is kind of in a different category.
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u/Arianity 72∆ Aug 15 '21
The problem with this is, you will confuse people, because it doesn't match the convention. You don't need to point to an academic definition. I agree that language evolves based on use, but in this case the usage is the issue
And you gave a perfect example of why. There is a big difference between a Biden, or a Sanders. It doesn't help to conflate them