From the comments section at Hit & Run, a reader named John Henry writes:

“I use throughout the term “liberal” in the original, nineteenth century sense which is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means the very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camnoflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that “liberal” has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have alowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensible word but should have even assisted by begining to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.”

F.A. Hayek, “The Road to Serfdom”, preface to 1956 edition.

I wanted to include in the column that Hayek insisted on calling himself a liberal until he died (as Milton Friedman still does), but didn’t have room — not to mention that I’d likely have had to offer at least a brief explanation of who Hayek was to a more generalized Fox audience.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2003 at 11:05 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.