What if I told you that the vast majority of people who identify themselves as “conservative”… are actually liberals? Or that the vast majority of people who call themselves “liberals”, and as we ourselves tend to identify them as… are not?
The people that we call “liberals” are actually something else. They’re called “progressives”. Actually, the word itself is at best, a misnomer and a worst, an outright lie, because there’s nothing about them that signifies progress… unless you mean “progress” the same way that you mean that someone’s cancer has “progressed” through the rest of their body, or the way the cancer of the radical leftist ideology has “progressed” throughout the nation.
Early in history the left appropriated the word “liberal” because the term “progressive” had become unpopular and toxic to the general public, due to the left’s support of collectivism and greater government power and authority. At that time, “liberal” sounded much more benevolent, or at least more benign. One can say that the definition of liberal changed from the original meaning of liberty and self-rule, to meaning a more “liberal use” of government power (and on the flip side, the term “conservative” became a word for a more restraint on government power).
Something that most of us have forgotten (or more likely, never learned to begin with, given our school system) is that the original American liberals were the founding fathers themselves; the very men responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, a document that restricted the power of the federal government, resulting in providing the American people with as much liberty as possible. This as opposed to the British monarchy under our then ruler, King George III and the Parliament, as well as their Tory supporters, who were conservatives invested in conserving the king’s power, rule and authority over the American colonies. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the colonists supported the British monarchy. It was a small, but determined group of liberal Patriots that fought for liberty and independence from our then ruler.
It is called “The War of Independence”, after all.
For those of you claiming “you’re not a liberal, you’re a conservative”, I’ll answer this way… what am I… what are we... conserving, exactly? The answer is, liberalism as it was believed and understood by the framers. We are conservatives only in the sense that we’re conserving actual liberalism. Call it “traditional” liberalism or even “classic” liberalism if you want, but that’s what it is.
Real liberals believe in the freedom of speech. The right to defend themselves. In acting lawfully… so long as those laws (and rules) are just, moral and make sense. The right to live your life as you see fit, with minimal, if any, interference by the government, as long as the rights of others are not infringed. Real liberals are also anti-authoritarian and oppose oppression.
Look at the people who call themselves “liberals” nowadays. Do they fall under that description?
I’m not trying to change the definition of liberalism. I’m just taking it back.
