Where did liberalism come from?
The answer is shockingly simple. First some language-nerd stuff: The original form is not the noun, not the -ism; it's the adjective: liberal. As a historical document attests:
Quote:
And so ẏe younger generation forsook the ways of her Forefathers, her Land, and ẏe God Almighty and filled their heads with liberal ideas and of book learning of ẏe utmost sophistery.
Those who harbored liberal ideas were known as
libbers, a portmanteau of
liar and
fibber. The single
b in the adjective form is likely due to its conflation with the word
libel. The connotation is one of deception: of oneself, others, or both. The libber used obtuse, quasi-philosophical arguments to rationalize their selfishness and immorality, often with the taint of callow rebellion against all that came before.
Liberalism then was simply the package of loosely coherent arguments and ideas irresponsible sophists would tell their neighbors and business associates.
The words fell out of common usage in English for a time and only picked up their modern political usage in the 19th century when it came to describe a political party in the United Kingdom, originally a faction of the Whigs whose ideas were deprecated by Tories and conservative Whigs alike. In the United States, a similar course was followed with the word starting as an insult before becoming a marked ideology. In the United States of the late 19th century, there was broad consensus on the Constitution and the role of government in Americans' lives and a prevailing ethic of hard work, thrift, self-restraint, and self-reliance.
Those who petitioned the government for assistance against this prevailing norm were almost universally seen as lazy, insincere, and morally degenerate—people who would rather smoke, drink, gamble, fornicate, and rob their neighbors than turn in an honest day's work. Initially, liberalism found its home among neither the Republicans nor the Democrats. The liberals wizened in time, and the colleges and universities of the day were a perfect grounds for honing their sophistry, a collusion based on the academy's constant need of grants and funds. Woodrow Wilson officially brought liberalism into the Democrat Party and into the White House, making it a permanent fixture in American politics. His Democrat successor FDR showered more taxpayer dollars on liberal constituencies like welfare queens, unions, and the elderly. By then liberalism had advanced to the point where liberals argued that their handouts would boost the economy and some B.S. about man helping his fellow man.
Since then the puerile attitude that originally defined liberalism has continued with the hippies and counterculture of the 1960s and every liberation and equal-rights movement. Today it's ObamaCare, the TARP, and out-of-control government spending and taxing.
24 Apr 2012, 9:18 pm
