By Bert Olivier at Brownstone dot org. Everywhere one looks today you see signs of the opposition between 'conservatives' and so-called 'liberals.' Sometimes conservatives are designated 'far-right,' and liberals 'left-wing.' Both terms appear to be self-explanatory, unless one keeps in mind that concepts do evolve historically. The term, 'amateur,' for example, used to have a very positive or affirmative meaning, namely someone who does something (like painting, or playing the piano) well, because they love doing it ('amateur' derives from the Latin for 'love'), but today its meaning is pejorative, contrasting with the term, 'professional,' which means more or less what 'amateur' used to mean; namely, that it applies to someone who excels at what they do. Similarly, the term, 'liberal' has arguably undergone a semantic shift in recent times – one that places it at a considerable remove from its original historical meaning. I have in mind the noun, with reference to a person; not the adjective, which means broadly 'being open to new, non-traditional ideas,' and 'supporting social and political change.' The Britannica Dictionary suggests that the noun means 'a person who believes that government should be active in supporting social and political change.' What did it mean when the concept of 'liberal' first made its appearance? It made its first appearance in the 14th century, when the term was employed as early as 1375 to describe the 'liberal arts' – a course of education intended for free-born individuals in medieval universities. Around that time, 'liberal' derived from the Latin liber, which meant 'free,' and denoted intellectual pursuits befitting a free person, as opposed to someone who rendered servile or mechanical labour. Accordingly, its etymological roots show that 'liberal' originally conveyed ideas of freedom, nobility, and generosity. The 18-century Enlightenmentsignalleda turning point, when 'liberal' began to assume its modern, affirmative connotations of support for individual rights, tolerance, and freedom from prejudice. In the late 19th century agreement largely appeared among liberals that political governmental power has the capacity to promote as well as protect the liberty of individuals. Accordingly, modern liberalism views the main obligation of government as consisting in the removal of obstacles preventing individuals from living freely and from actualising their full potential. There has been disagreement among liberals on the question, whether government should promote individual freedom rather than merely protect it. Today, however, events of particularly the last six years have made it difficult, if not impossible, to discern these characteristics in what, or who, presents itself – disingenuously, as it turns out – as 'liberalism' and 'liberal,' as I shall show below. First one should note that, what one might call the paradox of liberalism is clearly stated by Kenneth Minogue in Britannica online. He writes that it is the: …political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the American Revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best 'a necessary evil.' Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individual's life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against the individual. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power. Given the disruptive events that have rocked the world since Covid in 2020 – but arguably since the 2008 financial crisis – the problem, as stated by Minogue, above, has been complexified beyond recognition, where 'comple...
