Glenn Beck stole my thunder the other day when he pointed to an answer that Hillary Clinton gave at the YouTube Democratic debate a few weeks back. She was asked if she considered herself a liberal. She answered no, that liberalism had lost it's meaning in American and that "I consider myself a modern progressive."
Here's a link.
I got so excited I dropped my popsicle. I couldn't figure out why she would be so truthful, so candid, so . . . historically accurate! I've since realized how well calculated her answer was in her quest for the hearts of the far left (see the comments below the YouTube clip to get my drift.)
The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have never made complete sense in American politics, and now their historic meanings are almost the opposites of the ones we usually assign them in the political debate today.
The liberal movement came from the English and Scottish Enlightenment period of the 17th century. It was based around the idea that people should be free as individuals to make choices for themselves about how to live, what to believe and how to make a living. In fact, the American Revolution was probably one of the crowning achievements of the liberal movement.
So in the old world, at the time, the liberals were for free market economics, freedom of speech and religion, and a lessening of the power of the central government.
Conservatives in Europe and England were for preserving the land based class system, limiting commerce, and preserving the power of the Monarchy, the landed aristocracy and the establishment churches (Catholic and Anglican). Conservatism is by definition a reaction to change. Initially it was an opposition movement to stop or slow down the changes that were taking place in the Enlightenment world. Since then, any movement to stop or slow down political changes has been labeled "Conservative," sometimes by the labeler and sometimes by the labeled.
Obviously, historically and philosophically speaking, the American Revolution was a liberal revolution. Although the two major parties in America have always both been liberal at their philosophical cores, usually one or the other was in favor of enacting more changes in the political system than the other. Which party could or can now truly lay claim to the true, historic meaning of the term "Liberal" is a debate worth having. The trouble is that when FDR won the presidency from Hoover he claimed the liberal label for the Democrats and it stuck, despite the Hoover's and the Republican party's objections.
So now the Democrats feel that the liberal name has lost it's utility and they want to be called Progressives. More power to them because they are not really very liberal at all.
