Ahh .. one of my all time favorite subjects for a good rant – the hijacking of the term “liberal” by the left in American politics. Few examples of Orwellian linguistic ju-jitsu can compare to this one in terms of audacity and impact. Coupled with this is the way in which the word “conservative” has come to mean a combination of semantically unrelated items. Such a big subject … where to begin? How did the word “liberal” come to be identified with some of the most illiberal ideas in politics?
Once upon a time, the word “liberal” had a meaning that had a sensible and historically cogent connection to the Latin root from which it was derived, and from which the English word “liberty” also comes – libertas; freedom. “Liberals” were people who valued liberty, in particular and in the historical context in which the word was coined, “liberals” were people who held to the ideas of the Enlightenment and placed individual liberty at a very high value. In those days, “conservatives” were opposed to liberals, because they opposed the values of the Enlightenment, and sought to retain what they saw as pre-Enlightenment virtues, such as martial honor and the tie between traditional hereditary privilege and political power. This use of the terms made sense.
But over time, as the “cutting edge” of “progressive thought” moved “beyond” the Enlightenment to the wonderful world of Romanticism and the pseudo-science of Marxism, the “progressives” hated to lose the sheen that came with the word “liberal.” The label “liberal” had been synonymous with the most advanced thinking of its day. As political thought fragmented into the post-Enlightenment mish-mash of Rousseau’s evil spawn, the Romantics, and the even more noxious ideological swamp of Marxism, the meaning of the term “liberal” became clouded.
Interestingly, in Europe, those who embraced Romantic and Marxist political thought were more ready to let the “liberal” label go. But not so in backward America, where it took longer for these wonderful new ideas to gain adherents. Well into the late 19th and early 20th century, a liberal in America was a liberal – someone who valued individual liberty. Only in the panicky reaction to the Great Depression did that uniquely American blend of romantic populism and thinly-veiled Marxist ideology known as the New Deal happen. And the New Dealers wouldn’t and didn’t let go of the “liberal” label. The people who wanted to maintain Enlightenment values were “conservatives.” Those who didn’t embrace the new, new, new New Deal were regressive, holding onto a dead past. The “liberals” had an open mind to these new ideas – as they had 200 years before to the ideas that had overturned the ancien regime. So they thought of themselves.
Complicating things was the legacy of the incomplete social revolution that had begun only partially with emancipation of Negro slaves during the Civil War. To their credit, the northern and urban wings of the New Dealers were the (often reluctant) mainstream conduit for the impetus to complete that social revolution – one that was inherently “liberal” in the original sense of the word. Ironically, of course, the most recalcitrant “conservatives” on this issue were members of the same political party, the Democrats. Republican politics were largely skew to the issue of race relations in mid-20th century American politics (although not completely – Earl Warren was, after all, a staunch Republican). This was an accident of history brought about by the complete absence of any Republican power-base in the former slave-owning southern states after Reconstruction.
So the final, decisive turn of events that caused the shift in meaning in the American usage of the word “liberal” was the fact that the extremely left-leaning New Dealers were also the members of their party who, as a matter of history, brought about the adoption of “civil rights” as a Democratic Party issue. Having embraced this quintessentially and classically liberal cause, they became “the liberals” in American politics.
But of course, along with this came 150 years of post-Enlightenment “progress” – the rejection of moral values as real things, antipathy to the bourgeoisie, and the foundational Marxist dogma of the labor theory of value and class theory. All of this was accelerated in the cultural over-clocking of the 1960s, and the rise of identity politics as part of the “68 New Left.” By 1975 or so, the transformation of the meaning of the term “liberal” in the American political vocabulary was complete: As far as property rights and many other issues of individual liberty, the old liberals were now the new conservatives, and the new liberals were the proponents of identity politics and a state that knew no bounds when it came to the power to enforce payment for the “progressive” remaking of American society with such wonderful and invasive massive experiments like the welfare state, “urban renewal” and affirmative action, all very “illiberal” policies in the traditional sense of the word.
In order to regain political power, the traditionally boring Republican party of Barry Goldwater had to make the infamous devil’s bargain with the religious right and the rest, as they say, is history.
So – what is a real American “liberal” to call himself or herself? If Comrades Nader and Kucinich and Boxer call themselves “liberals,” then the word has truly become an Orwellian linguistic trick. “Libertarian” is the closest we have to a term that has the meaning that the term had 80 years ago. But that word has become problematic for me, personally, for reasons I won’t go into here, but that I’ve hinted at elsewhere on the forum. “Minarchist” is accurate, but a linguistic ticket to having to make a lengthy explanation. Unfortunately for me, the theft of the term “liberal” has left me, personally, with no satisfying term to describe my political philosophy, if I’m to be understood.
) I'll answer your BBC point here.
