Liberals and Conservatives

Just like biological organisms, words evolve.  That is, they change their meanings over time.  Part of this evolution is natural, reacting to a new environment; and part is artificial, where some alter the use of words for partisan purposes.  So it is with these most important and most maligned political words, liberal and conservative.  In this essay, I will attempt to demonstrate the evolution of these words’ meanings.

The goto place for a discussion of word origins is the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED to scholars) (work began on the OED in 1857 and is ongoing).  Unhappily, access to the online OED is by subscription only, at $100 / year.  So, I chose the second-best online option: the Online Etymology Dictionary.

So, let’s get to work and examine these two most consequential words in all of politics, liberal and conservative.  Indented paragraphs are lifted without editing from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

A Civics Class

If you did not suffer through a Civics class while you attended high school, you would be forgiven if you did not know:

• That the birthday of the United States of America is July 4^th, 1776
• That our national flag has 50 stars, that they are white on a blue background, and that there are 50 stars because there are currently 50 states in the union
• That our national flag has 13 stripes, that they alternate white and red, and that 13 is the number of the original colonies