I'm a Brit, I would no think of Joe as a liberal, and I only read this thread as I was so shocked to hear he might be a left leaning commentator. Obviously reading this, he is not.
Re:My YouTube Earnings
by richrichardsson on Tuesday January 03, 2023 @05:44AM
(#34229961)
I'm also a Brit, and to be honest, the term "liberal" in a political context has lost all meaning for me since everyone seems to have their own definition of what it actually entails.
I blame Jeremy Thorpe
This seems to be the case for a lot of words these days.
That exemplifies the cultural hegemony. In the UK, liberals historically stood for laissez-faire economics and minimal government intervention (among other things). Before the rise of the Labour Party, the main second party in the UK was the Liberal Party, which supported laissez-faire capitalism, in contrast to the Tories of the day, who tended to oppose free market capitalism and support paternalistic social and economic programs that benefited the nation as a whole, not just the rich (obviously that's changed—classic liberals now dominate the Tory Party). Lots of people still use liberal in this way (classically liberal), but the meaning has gradually changed under the influence of the US, so many people are unaware that liberal could mean anything but vaguely left-leaning and progressive.
This assumed cultural hegemony by some US citizens is frustrating as hell; they are incredibly quick to assume (or demand even) the rest of the world knows their cultural references/idioms/etc., yet make zero effort to discover what the rest of the world is doing. Unfortunately they are also loud and so it's easy to come to the false conclusion all US citizens are like that.