Literal Liberal

Benjamin Martin: May I sit with you?
Charlotte Selton: It's a free country, or at least it will be.
--The Patriot

In the early 1800s, if you were a 'liberal' then you were someone who believed in individual freedom and liberty. You distrusted centralized government. You favored localized, republican government whose primary role was to uphold property rights. You believed in private enterprise, and that freedom was more important than safety and security ('Give me liberty or give me death.'). This was the classical liberalism of Locke, Bastiat, and Jefferson.

Could today's definition of 'liberal' possibly be any more antithetical? If you're a liberal today, then you believe in strong centralized government with the authority to meddle in the lives of its citizenry. You think that the State has the right to confiscate property from some and redistribute it to others. You feel that State must control economic activity, and that the rights of the individual are subordinate to the rights of 'society.'

This view is also known as 'social liberalism,' or 'progressivism' although its principles align with socialism.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter thought it interesting that opponents of classical liberalism were able to appropriate the label and assign a different meaning to it. Interesting indeed.

Historians site the populist movements of the late 1800s as one catalyst behind the transformation of the notion of liberal toward socialistic underpinnings.

Just goes to show you how twisted around things can get over time.