Liberals (and Progressives) Love to Turn Meaning Upside Down

The previous post discussed how progressives have shamelessly turned the meaning of Judicial Activism upside down in an effort to intimidate the Supreme Court.  This is the very same sort of "word" game modern liberals played in co-opting the word "liberal" to describe themselves. 

The propensity for liberals/progressives to manipulate the meaning of words to support an errononeous argument is the reason I am put on guard any time liberals/progressives claim that their argument is only about the "facts."  

To be fair, conservatives also play similar word games, which is again why we need a New Center in American politics dedicated to the enduring principles supported by our founding fathers.

But this post is about modern liberals how they hi jacked the word "liberal" to describe themselves and then turned the meaning of the word upside down is an important example highlighting a propensity that continues to this day, as described in the previous post on Judicial Activism.

The original term “liberal” referred to someone who supported the politics of individual rights and limited government.   Now we have to distinguish what were the original liberals by calling them “classical liberals.” 

Modern liberals liked the positive connotation of the word “liberal” as it meant a fight against the embedded institutional tyranny of the reigning feudal political order in Western world until 1600’s.  (Classical) Liberals fought for private property rights and a private domain in which individuals were set free from the feudel and manorial systems of early and late Medieval age.

Modern liberals liked being connected with the idea of “freedom fighting” associated with the original (classical) “Liberals”.  But, first they had to turn the meaning of “freedom” upside down from the spirit of the meaning of the word as used in the original meaning of “Liberal.” 

Liberal originally meant someone who believed in freedom from oppressive government.  Modern liberals turned the meaning around by focusing their efforts on supporting individual freedom from adverse social outcomes.   Modern liberals don’t care one whit about individual freedom.  They care about injecting certain social outcomes into society no matter if the means required to do so compromises the property rights of certain individuals who are judged to be less worthy of freedom than others.  Typically, this is viewed through the lens of social justice, where the government’s efforts to steal money from the wealthy and redistribute to the poor is rationalized as justified by the worthy ends pursued.

Unfortunately for the word "liberal", its meaning turned negative when “(modern) liberals” pursued their so called “liberal” policies.  This is because modern liberal policies turned out to be unpopular.  They were unpopular because they failed.  And why did they fail?  Because the policies entailed an ends justifies the means logic that is self-defeating (and tyranical / authoritarian). 

it is no wonder that modern liberals decided to call themselves "progressives" when the term "liberal" turned politically toxic. 

The superficially well meaning policies pursued by modern liberals (now called progressives) required (and still require no matter they're called progressives) trampling on some people's individual rights in the name of good intentions and “social justice.”    it would be clearly evident through a Classical liberal lens that such a scheme (entailing the governments pursuit of “social justice”) is self-defeating because the means of achieving social justice ends requires tampling on individual rights and freedom.   

   

Big Government (including both liberals and "conservatives" promised certain outcomes in the 1960s and 1970s such as The Great society and the ENd of Poverty, plus the end of communism in Vietnam.  The result was the Great Inflation of the 1970s and enormous social instability and social division.    Instead of helping the poor and/or improving the productivity of the economy and reducing so called market failure, the big government policies pursued by both Dems and Republicans (especially Nixon) accomplished exactly opposite.  Income inequality remained about the same, but the country faced deep structural imbalances, reduced competitiveness and a decade of financial sector stagnation, and we left Vietnam nearly broken financially and spiritually as a country.

The American founding fathers realized very well the principle that government was important in protecting individual property rights, but also that government could also usurp individual property rights if it ever got too powerful.  That is why we have separation of powers, and where we got the concept of judicial review, which is the idea that the court can strike down any law passed by Congress that it determines is inconsistent with the constitution. 

Classical liberals understand that judicial review is a vital pillar of a “free society” because while the government protects individual property rights, some other independent institution must also make sure to protect the people FROM the government.

having said all of that, It is also true (as i mentioned above) that conservatives play fast and loose with the meaning of words, including with the term "conservative", but that story is for another time.