Comments by "Rob McCune" (@robm6645) on ""Classical Liberals" Clueless on "Equality of Opportunity?"" video.

False dichotomy, with equal opportunity you can still have outcomes that are unequal but still decide what is an unacceptable level of inequality. The fact the minimum wage exists in most developed countries is an example of trying to equalize outcomes, so is universal health care, progressive income taxes work to reduce(not eliminate) unequal outcomes from the other end. Try telling anyone those things aren't liberal.
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jsgdk It doesn't matter what your moral framework is, the fact is a progressive income tax takes money from the wealthy and pays for services for everyone. It is inherently about creating more equality. And you shouldn't adopt right wing talking points out knee-jerk reactions. As ShotRange pointed out, "equality of opportunity" is more often than not an excuse to get rid of equalizing forces in society.
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jsgdk Perhaps a better way to put is that your framework is still an anti-inequality measure because it pays for services that ensure equal opportunity and more equal outcomes. "Equality of opportunity not equality of outcome" has been a right wing talking point for decades, people only started saying "Liberals believe in equality of opportunity not equality of outcome" around 2014. Quite frankly you're behind the times as to how quickly that became a slogan for illiberal people. The thing is it's now 2018 and the stories of those people who promoted the idea "Liberals believe in equality of opportunity not equality of outcome" very often involve Trump, white supremacists or even Nazis in some form or another.
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Storywalker4 If you want the definition to stay stuck in the 18th century so be it, so long as you define what you are talking about up front I'm fine with you using the word liberal that way. It has a different meaning today and that's what I'm fighting for. I'd be happy to abandon it for other terms like social democracy and let the people trying to co-opt it from the right have it.
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You really can't call other people out for using the term liberalism for forms of social democracy when immediately after you reveal that the term classical liberal is just virtue signalling. And if you're going by polisci definitions, then liberalism isn't even on the left.
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You said social democracy wasn't liberalism, social democracy is center left meaning liberalism would be on the center or to the center right. And yes, "classical liberal" is virtue signalling to the right that you're not going to threaten certain sensibilities they have unlike those bad Marxists over there. The fact you admit you fear liberal as a smear shows exactly what I was describing. An actual classical liberal would want a return to the 19th century, when social progress was purely a function of increasing negative liberty. The 20th century saw progress as the advancement of both positive and negative liberities, with positive liberties like universal healthcare, the right to vote, anti-discrimination laws, workers rights, some forms of health, safety, and environmental regulation etc. Sargon redefined the term classical liberalism too back in 2014-2015, and as I have said earlier, dressing up reactionaries as some kind true heirs to the enlightenment is passe and him trying to do it again is proving to be a flop. As I said earlier a lot of the story of this "classical liberal" fad ends with Nazis and white supremacists, Sargon and Kraut are a few of the last holdouts as so many of their fans and friends embraced the alt-right that they're being undone by opposing it and they've validated so much of the alt-right victim complex they have no ground to criticize their solutions. They should have listened to Niemöller because there is no one left to speak for them. If you're going to oppose the redefinition of liberalism by America, then you also need to oppose the redefinition of liberalism by internet reactionaries.
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