QUESTIONS ASKED: Who Is a Liberal? What Is Liberalism Today?
Maybe we should attempt to reclaim the term and label liberal for ourselves? That’s the recommendation of Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University, in a recent offering for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute entitled “Ten Reasons You Shouldn’t Call Leftists ‘Liberal’“. Here are a few of his ten very good reasons:
REASON #1
The two ancient meanings run deep in Western civilization. Calling leftists “liberal” evokes generosity and the blessings of the liberal arts and sciences. To call leftists “liberal” is to extol their character and purpose. It was not for nothing that, between 1880 and 1940, collectivists arrogated “liberal” for themselves. . .
According to Fred Siegel in his 2014 book, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class, in America, the disastrous administration of Woodrow Wilson caused “Progressives” to rebrand with a huge stolen base:
Liberals were those Progressives who had renamed themselves so as to repudiate Wilson. “The word liberalism,” wrote Walter Lippmann in 1919, “was introduced into the jargon of American politics by that group who were Progressives in 1912 and Wilson Democrats from 1916 to 1918.” The new liberalism was a decisive cultural break with Wilson and Progressivism. While the Progressives had been inspired by a faith in democratic reforms as a salve for the wounds of both industrial civilization and power politics, liberals saw the American democratic ethos as a danger to freedom at home and abroad.
And it has been ever thus.
Reclaiming the L-word would be great — and imagine the fun if the right ever reclaims the phrase “trickle-down economics…”