Neo- as a prefix- signifies new or revised. So I understood that neoliberals were liberals who had espoused the belief that free markets would be the answer to every goal they had previously set. But I don't think I have ever heard anyone self identify as a neoliberal. Tony Blair's "third way" comes close. 2008 should have been the end of a belief in unregulated markets. Then there are neocons. Again, did anyone self identify as a neocon, or are both these terms actually epithets flung at the offenders?
So you understood the word as I did, as an extreme point of view. My discovery that's now a relative term -- more market strategies than the speaker approves of -- was enlightening. I don't want to re-litigate the Clinton years, but I still don't apply the term to him. After his health care plan crashed and burned, he turned to proposals that he could actually get past Congress. OTOH . . . well, that's all moot now.
My research showed the same thing: No one now identifies as newliberal. 50 years ago Milton Friedman and has peers did. (The word was often hyphenated then. I wonder when that stopped.) But not since it became a term of abuse. There's a whole story to be told about the way terms change from favorable, or even just descriptive, to denigrating. I think that's happening now with "woke."
It also happens in reverse,. Think about the way Trump called Clinton a nasty woman, and her supporters made it a rallying cry.
Neo- as a prefix- signifies new or revised. So I understood that neoliberals were liberals who had espoused the belief that free markets would be the answer to every goal they had previously set. But I don't think I have ever heard anyone self identify as a neoliberal. Tony Blair's "third way" comes close. 2008 should have been the end of a belief in unregulated markets. Then there are neocons. Again, did anyone self identify as a neocon, or are both these terms actually epithets flung at the offenders?
So you understood the word as I did, as an extreme point of view. My discovery that's now a relative term -- more market strategies than the speaker approves of -- was enlightening. I don't want to re-litigate the Clinton years, but I still don't apply the term to him. After his health care plan crashed and burned, he turned to proposals that he could actually get past Congress. OTOH . . . well, that's all moot now.
My research showed the same thing: No one now identifies as newliberal. 50 years ago Milton Friedman and has peers did. (The word was often hyphenated then. I wonder when that stopped.) But not since it became a term of abuse. There's a whole story to be told about the way terms change from favorable, or even just descriptive, to denigrating. I think that's happening now with "woke."
It also happens in reverse,. Think about the way Trump called Clinton a nasty woman, and her supporters made it a rallying cry.
About the neocons, I know almost nothing.
Is it possible that words when flung as insults deserve an emotional clarification?
Like what?