>>2449557
What is Conservative?
It goes back to a semantic question about what is right, what is left, and what is conservative. These terms do not mean the same today as they meant 100 years ago.
During the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, the meaning of the word liberal changed drastically. Westbrook Pegler, a dogged critic of the New Deal, wrote this in his column of 21 September 1953:
>>The truth is that our entire people have been brainwashed by the Roosevelt-Truman administrations for the last 20 years. The result is that today most of us don't even know what our constitutional rights really are. We are afraid to say that Hitler was right about communism and Soviet Russia. Words which formerly had honest meanings now mean exactly the reverse to most of us. Those few who stubbornly insist on using the word โliberalโ in its old, genuine meaning, are almost totally misunderstood. We even know we will be misunderstood when we use it.
[โฆ]
>>I am one of the most liberal liberals in the country. But those who use the name โliberalโ as their designation of a line of thought put me down as a reactionary. Well, I am. I hit back when I am hit. That is my reaction to abusive action. Suppose then that we say I am a reactionary liberal. These two political cliches are supposed to be mutually contradictory, although they really are not as any person must admit who knows the meanings of plain American words. [Westbrook Pegler, Reading Eagle, 21 September 1953]
Pegler tells us that before FDR, a liberal was somebody who wanted free markets and less interference from government. That political orientation today is called conservative.
So, if what now passes for conservative used to be liberal, what was conservative? I will give you a clue. Being conservative 100 years ago was not about less government. Conservatives 100 years ago used to recognize that individual freedom had a downside to it.