Salta,

This is an excellent question—one that I wish every voter knew the answer to. The historical answer is that the transition from classical liberalism to welfare state liberalism started in England in the late 1800s, and took off in America at the turn of the 20th century, culminating in FDR's New Deal. The “new Liberals,” as they were called at the time, were socialists at heart but knew that socialism wouldn’t fly in Britain and especially not in America. So they manipulated the concepts of classical liberalism to infuse them with socialist meaning. Freedom from interference came to mean freedom from the want; coercion as the exercise of actual force came to mean any kind of social or economic pressure (like being subject to market wages); rights to life, liberty, and property expanded to include rights welfare benefits. It was conceptual warfare.

The full story is told in Arthur Ekirch’s, The Decline of American Liberalism, 1955, which Ayn Rand recommended at the time ( on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-L... ). There's also my book A Life of One's Own: Individual Rights in the Welfare State; Chap 3 is a shorter version of the history, focusing on the manipulative change in the concepts ( on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Ones-Own-Indi... ).

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ADMIN EDIT: Added links to books.

I wouldn't count on it, the progressives use rhetorical tricks as one of their primary tools. This is why Orwell had Newspeak as one of his key mechanisms of control of the population.

Hello Salta,
This post is very interesting because I keep running into the same thing.

I can't say for sure when the term "liberal" was hijacked but SaltyDog touched on the culprits. If i'm remembering correctly the progressive movement in the late 1800s began to use the term to lend credibility to their ideas. They are just now returning to the use of "progressive" because the negative connotation is all but gone. (Except for Salty. Lol)

I have mentioned the destruction of language in a few other conversations and, to me, it is a very important topic. I don't know if there is any way to stop it but it is important to understand it, recognize it and call it out whenever we see it happening.

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon; "The “stolen concept” fallacy, first identified by Ayn Rand, is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends"

The most well known word (to Objectivists anyway) is selfish which is regularly utilized to lump the Bernie Madoffs and the Bill Gates' into one basket.
The most contested seems to be altruism which is equated with charity (to say otherwise gets people fired up) and is used to impose a duty upon people. (It takes a village)
I'm sure most of us on here have had the "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner" discussion whenever someone blurts out "we live in a democracy, after all".

Don't forget that we don't know what the meaning "of the word is is."

It seem that these last few years that the left is even moving away from the term liberal and using progressive instead. The connotation, I'm sure, is to suggest that their ideas represent progress and anyone who disagrees is nothing more than a hairy knuckled Neanderthal.

I prefer to think of it as the opposite of pro is con, so the opposite of progress is congress.

Actually the term "liberal" outside the US often still means classical liberal and financial conservative.
The term has been stolen only in the US political propaganda.

An now taxes are becoming "investments" see the linked video from the great state of Georgia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYAHNv7l...

Progressing ever forward in the great ideas of deception..

Hello salta,

It seems to me that there is a lack of focus in at least some of the comments that you received. Let me try to explain why I think that.

There is an axiom which I believe to be self evident: "To be able to write well, you have to be able to think well." Writing is a communication means among humans. So is speaking. We seem to be more readily able to recognize a confused mind from confused speech than from confused writing. I do not know why is that, but I suspect that it might be because the speech is so much older than writing, so that our discerning skills had much longer time to develop. As we know, words are labels for the concepts in our consciousness. That is why a confusion in language is a confusion in concepts. It can be involuntary or deliberate(!).

All communications addressed broadly at the public have the purpose of imparting knowledge, thus attempting to change the minds of the recipients. Increasing knowledge is a change of mind. So is the deliberately misleading distortion of recipients' concepts. You can call it mind control.

From Wikipedia:
"Mind control (also known as brainwashing, reeducation, coercive persuasion, thought control, or thought reform) is a theoretical indoctrination process which results in "an impairment of autonomy, an inability to think independently, and a disruption of beliefs and affiliations. In this context, brainwashing refers to the involuntary reeducation of basic beliefs and values".

Throughout history, the mind control thrived. From oracles, to religion ("God's word"), to witchcraft ("Devil's word"), to political campaigning, to advertising etc. On this last one. Just listen to how frequently TV advertisement teach kids broken logic.

The labels "progressive", "socialist", "liberal" and now back to "progressive" have been used by people who wish, by use of the government's monopoly on use of force, to enforce on all people their version of Utopia. It is a fundamentally dishonest approach. They resort to dishonesty because they cannot defend their approach on straight logic and reality. The roots are in Kantian and subsequent evil philosophies. Evil, because they deny reason, knowledge and even existence. In practice, when people begin to see through the falsity of the label of the period, they change to a knew label, in the hope that people will not notice that the only difference is in the label. You may wish to read the item entitled "Liberals" in Rand's Lexicon.

One last thing. DanShu, above, voices trouble in deciding which label applies to him. To me, the answer is obvious. The only label for him is DanShu. That does not prevent him from being a member of a political party, activist group or anything else. We each have an obligation to acquire and "install" in ourselves our own philosophies. Yes, they will be unique, just as each one of us is a unique, unrepeatable rational animal. I subscribe to an Objectivist philosophy. I don't even know if my philosophy in every detail coincides with the views of Ayn Rand. The knowledge that our principles coincide is enough for me.

Please forgive me the verbosity. I am obsessed by a strong desire to never be misunderstood. Alas, I do not know how write (and think!) as well as Ayn Rand did.

In the 60's after Kennedy died there was a sea change in the Democratic party and it became interested in controlling citizens through Taxation and regulation. I

When you control language you control thinking. It is critical that we be clear in our lanquage (even taking the time to define exactly what we mean -- I got in trouble a couple weeks ago here when I used the term "one percenters" w/o defining what I meant).. For example, so-called "progressives" actually want to REGRESS society to the point where masters rule over peasants/slaves again. Politicians love to use terms without clear/specified meanings. Senator Dick____ Durbin loves to talk about so-and-so's "fair share." He never defines it. I suspect for Dickyboy there is no upper limit to what is "fair" for someone else to pay in taxes. The abortion lobby uses the terms "women's reproductive health" and "pro-choice" I think it was in either "animal farm" or "1984" that political terms meant virtually the opposite of what they mean in any dictionary sense. If you look at the names of bills before congress then you read the bill to see what it will do you will see we are at that point. The "affordable care act" is a prime example. Common Core -- as in a list of core things students should know might be a pretty good idea. What is in the law has little to nothing to do with "core" knowledge or principles. Governmental agencies (Energy, Education, HUD for example) one would think would be there to promote what their name says; instead they generally hinder the functioning of the relevant industry.
Take time to call a spade a spade. A REGRESSIVE a Regressive. An Illiberal and illiberal. A censor a censor. A fascist a fascist.

The Progressives hijacked the term 'Liberal'. Hijack: (v) to take surreptitiously.

Progressives accomplish this by constantly changing the meaning *THEY* assign to common words. Then berating the rest of us for not using their shifted meaning.

"Liberal" in the 19th century sense meant free, easy, abundant,not bound by lots of restrictions. Today it means the exact opposite. When conservatives finally caught on to the changed meaning, the lefties changed to "progressive(s)."
Progressive used to mean forward-thinking, making positive progress. It has come to mean what liberal now means. The meanings evolved, but not naturally. It's sort of a forced evolution as performed by Dr. Frankenstein.

I can't say exactly, but my guess would be the early 20th Century, almost certainly by FDR's time, but I'm open to correction.

And it certainly was a quite successful (and IMO intentional) "re-branding", as corporate Newspeak would call it. I know it relates to Marx and his followers, when the word "liberty" was transformed from "liberty to do..." to "liberty "from"...exploitation, hunger, the need to work...etc...

(I damned if I can find it now, or even an online reference, but I'm certain I read in a legitimate source that the "New School for Social Research" in New York City was originally named after Karl Marx...but that was shortly "re-branded".)

There are different dimensions of liberty versus repression. For example, one can be a libertarian in regard to freedom of doing business, but staunchly against gay relationships and abortions. Ayn Rand confused many by being both a business libertarian and a staunch defender of rights for gays and abortion rights.

The Political Compass site does away with the over-simplistic "left versus right" thing and instead maps people's alignments on a two dimensional graph. If you've got a couple of minutes to answer a few questions, it's an interesting study:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/

"Liberal Arts" colleges seemed to mean that the
widespread attention of the students to "arts" or
specialties of all kinds would produce a well-rounded
individual. . according to my mom, whose degree
was in something like social studies from Agnes
Scott in atlanta. . I asked about engineering, and
she said that science was included. . but engineering
is the application of science to the betterment of
humankind, I said. . we went circular from there.

liberals probably adopted the name from something
like this, I would think -- the well-rounded learning
of everything progressive for humankind -- progress
toward the envisioned utopia. . maybe? -- j

The deception of the voting masses has always been of paramount importance to the body politic. Thus they change definitions, say one thing and do another, and generally lie - all for a love of power and the wealth that goes with it.

The "liberals" have been controlling the language for 100 years. They are no longer members if the Democrat party, it's the "Democratic" party. And they have all the great anagrams and names locked up too, ACORN, Move Forward, Students for a democratic society, America First and the best one Progressive. Who doesn't want progress?

50's and 60's. Post WW2 the progressives did not want to be associated with the horrors of the Holocaust even though they were basically, from a philosophical perspective, the American version of the fascist or nazi parties in Europe. And, in fact, had implemented eugenics policies here. They were trying to backpedal and distance themselves from their earlier activities.

Appreciate the dialog and insight! Understanding the origins of the "liberal" name is a valuable lesson along with understanding how the label has been hijacked over the years.

Hello salta,
More like de-evolution in my mind. Those that have absconded and distorted the title are now more likely to call themselves "progressive." They keep pushing marxist nonsense from the past. It is always the same ... "We just didn't do it right..." or have enough government force/backing to make it work.. bla bla bla
Baa Baa Baa blind sheep...
Regards,
O.A.

I read once that "liberal" actually referred to a "libertarian" - one who was Liberal with Liberties.
Perhaps the libertarian party needs to reclaim it, it might help their voting numbers.

Related to this, but not about misuse of the word as such, is Arthur Ekirch's excellent history, The Decline of American Liberalism. http://www.amazon.com/American-Liberalis...

The art of politics is to to get people to vote for something they have no understanding of. The word "Progressive" has the root word of progess in it. Progressive used to be associated with something new, upbeat, the continuation of an idea or thing. Somehow the politicians change the definition to represent a political movement dating back to William Jennings Bryant describing the unfairness of capitalism. The irony in "progressive politics" is there is now progress. The speeches given today decrying poverty and accusing the rich of taking from the poor are the same argument made 110 years ago. Their point is still the same. The only way to make equal is to take from the rich and redistribute, through government, to those in need. akin to from those with abilities to those in need. That doesn't sound like progress to me.

They are also good at redefining the other side of the argument. A "Conservative" originally meant a politician or person that wants to conserve the intent and meaning of the Constitution of the United States. How easy it has been for them to see a wealthy person purchase something inexpensive (cheap) and define him as conservative (cheap). If you tell a lie enough times, it begins to have the ring of truth.

Add to that a laziness in the listener and there is magic. For example; I have met many people that claimed to want to become millionaires. A closer look revealed they really wanted to be in position to spend a million dollars, which is the inverse of becoming a millionaire.

As to "liberal", I think libertarian has assumed the position of "Classic liberal" and the shopworn term liberal is whatever definition pop culture media chooses for it.

In Australia, the Liberal party are the conservatives, with the Labor party having socialist goals, so I guess the classical meaning still applies there.

The modern theft of the word "liberal" by progressives was started under President Wilson by George Creel, chairman of the Committee on Public Information, and promoted by Edward Bernays (author of the book "Propaganda" and one of Joseph Goebbels favorite political thinkers), also a CPI member.

These same figures also established many elements of political correctness. Their work was admired and adopted by the Nazis and the Communist Party. It is unsettling to see how unashamedly Democrats have relished using these tools of tyrannical (and yes, I include Woodrow Wilson as the first American tyrant) regimes.

Interestingly, the current use of the term "progressive" seems to imply anti-technology. That is to say, it seems to mean incremental change in the direction of the user's philosophy that does not include an improvement in technology.

Jan