School text books-infused agenda

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 Lightningbolt wrote:

The pure definition of the term liberalism has been hijacked by the political arena. 

Alright now we're getting somewhere with this discussion.

I asked this earlier, but I'll shoot again-what is liberalism to you?

I suspect by your discussion that liberalism and humanism / secularism would be very closely related. That's fine, I'm not about arguing dictionary definitions, but bear in mind that the political arena is where liberalism as a word got its start.

From Wiki-

 Wiki wrote:

Liberalism first became a distinct political movement during the Age of Enlightenment, when it became popular among philosophers and economists in the Western world. Liberalism rejected the notions, common at the time, of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition. Locke argued that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property^[8] and according to the social contract governments must not violate these rights. Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and sought to replace absolutism in government with democracy and the rule of law.

Carry this, say, a couple hundred years in the future and you see the word "liberal" being touted around by Republicans when aiming for civil rights and desegregation movements.

In actuality the word has been twisted in the way that you're using it. There is no negative connotation to terms like liberal and conservative, and they don't necessarily work against each other. You can be pro human rights and against change at the same time.

The movement that you, and most other conservatives, refer to is more like a militant secularist movement. I think that the connotations applied are almost a conglomeration of secularist and various other ideologies that the conservative right love to hate but in reality those are boogymen and not representative of the liberal philosophy on the whole.

The forum did a test way back when and we found that, despite our constant bickering, we all tested very similarly on the political compass. We were all just slightly left of center. That's how I generally apply liberalism-left of the center on the political compass. 

Which brings me to this...

 Whale wrote:

Which is ironic if you look at the historical development of academia.

People tend to believe that the school system has warped history and moved its political focus to the left when in reality there's alot of argument that initial teachings of history were warped in a pro-American, conservative sense. Nobody would have painted the US as the bad guy in any conflict or dispute in 1950's America. Nobody would have dared question the idea that maybe our system was not founded on the ideas that we had traditionally believed.

But as historians began to dig into personal diaries and documents from the common man rather than the ideologues that generally get the attention in history, they found that the traditional view was warped based on the political and military leaders whose lens it was seen through. Looking at history from the bottom up has caused us to shift our views to a more humanitarian and therefore more liberal viewpoint.

So in essence you're right, just not in the way you think you are. Rather than a vast degredation of the system what we've seen is an attempt to preserve the integrity of history itself by removing the ultra conservative / patriotic clear coat applied to it.

This is tough for baby boomers to deal with because it seems like rewriting history to be anti-God or anti-American. Instead the reality is that history is much too complex to define with a broad brush and an actual study thereof requires one to remove their big bad political theories and look through multiple viewpoints. That's why I emphasize the critical reasoning elements of school so hard...without critical reasoning school will baffle and anger you.