Liberalism as a philosophy was born out of the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and it espouses individual liberties over governmental fiat and equality over divine right and hereditary privilege. As such, liberalism called for free trade, freedom of religion, democracy, freedom of the press, and international cooperation vs. empire-building.
In other words, our Founding Fathers were dyed in the wool liberals! And yet somehow their main ideologies have come to be identified with fanatical conservatism, while liberalism has been rebranded to stand for collectivism over individual liberties, privilege over equality, and the elimination of economic, political, and personal freedoms in the name of the greater good.
To an increasingly large extent, liberalism has come to stand for the reestablishment of the very monarchies that it tore down in the 1700's, calling for ever growing, increasingly powerful governments. Conservatism by contrast, which once stood for the preservation of the hereditary privileged class, has now come to stand for the preservation of traditional liberal ideology. But how did this switch happen? Maybe semantics is to blame...
Conservatism, by its very nature, is the fundamental movement to preserve the status quo through resisting change. Conservatives at that time stood for the preservation of the monarchy because that's what they knew, and they didn't want change to upset their positions. This goes without saying; those in power seek to remain in power, while those under their rule seek freedom from oppression. And that's what liberalism means! Freedom.
Literally. The word liberalism is derived from the Latin word for freedom, liber. It doesn't simply mean to resist the status quo, unless the status quo just so happens to be oppressive in nature. People forgot that, though, and came to identify liberalism with blanket contrarianism, trying to overthrow whatever was currently in place, even if what they were trying to overthrow was the very liberty for which they themselves had fought so hard.
In this way, the previous liberals became a new school of conservatives, seeking to preserve the liberal society they had founded, whereas the contrarians, still identifying as liberals, sought to tear down the bastions of freedom. Not because they were oppressed, mind you, but simply because it is their nature to lash out at the world. On a fundamental level, I believe these people simply blame the world for their problems, and will continue to lash out at society no matter what. I think of them as revolution's useful idiots. They're always up for a good overthrow, regardless of who or what is to be overthrown.
In essence, people began to confuse liberty with entitlement. They confused the right to pursue happiness with the right to unearned privilege. The monarchies were gone, but they still weren't happy-and instead of looking to their own faults for their lack of personal success, they looked to blame the success of others for their own failures. And naturally the solution to all of life's problems was to curtail the success of others by limiting their freedoms. Enter socialism.
Socialism is defined by the public ownership of the means of production. In other words, it takes the accomplishments of others and gives them to those who had nothing to do with them. By its very nature, it rewards laziness while punishing hard work and accomplishment. By the same token, it rewards cowardice while punishing courage and risk-taking. But most crushing of all to the human spirit, it rewards fear while punishing faith.
Under socialism, those who have the courage to take a leap of faith in order to better themselves are cut down, while those who were unwilling to risk anything are given the fruits of their labor. It is institutionalized theft, no different than breaking into someone's house and stealing their property. Only in the instance of socialism, it is organized and sanctioned by the state.
Ironically, socialism is the reestablishment of the very thing that liberalism destroyed, being that the main tenet of a monarchy is the divine right to the fruits of someone else's labor. Socialism can promise anything it wants, but it's natural conclusion is the creation of a ruling class, often hereditary, which will inevitably impoverish and enslave the non ruling class.
Need proof? Just look at the world around you! Socialism has brought us the likes of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, Mao's China, Tito's Yugoslavia, and North Korea, just to name a few. Now some will argue that fascism is inherently different from socialism, and therefore want to exclude examples like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but that's splitting hairs to be sure. Not only did fascist governments openly identify as socialist, fascism and socialism are like Coke and Pepsi-two different brands of the same thing. First and foremost, both are predicated on the idea that the state owns industry and commerce; this is the underlying principle behind both systems. Other similarities are a preference for dictators over democratically elected governments, a proclivity towards a single party, the use of force to implement their ideas, the mobilization of society as a whole to feed their military machine, and the assumption of the right to unprecedented control over peoples' lives, along with the vilification of individualism.
So how do today's liberals compare to those of the Enlightenment? And where did things go so horribly wrong?
Early liberal philosophers like John Locke believed that government was a contract to ensure that the right to life, liberty, and property was upheld, as opposed to the law of the jungle, which holds that the powerful can take advantage of the weak. He insisted that the state be given the consent of the people, without which it was no longer legitimate, so that if it ever deprived the people of their life, liberty, or property they would have the natural right to rescind the power of the state to govern them. Classical liberals didn't see the state as an ideal to be upheld, but rather as a slightly less distasteful option than survival of the fittest. Like Thomas Paine said, government, even at its best, is a necessary evil.
liberals today, however, believe that the state owes them more than simple protection and the right to self determination. They want stuff! More specifically, they want stuff that they didn't have to work for. And if anyone has more stuff than them, then that person's stuff should be confiscated and given to them. In essence, they believe that property belongs to the state, as opposed to the people.
Moreover, they believe that life and liberty also belong to the state, in that your right to exist is predicated upon your compliance to having your property forcibly taken from you. Don't believe me? Let's do a little exercise in critical thinking:
About 50% of your tax dollars go to entitlement programs, and the mere fact that you're paying taxes in the first place is a pretty good indicator that you won't see much return on your investment. Now you're a charitable fellow, and you have no problem sharing your daily bread with the sick, disadvantaged, and unlucky; but lately you're noticing that most of the people taking advantage of your generosity are able-bodied and sound of mind. Therefore, according to the principles of early Enlightenment philosophers, you should simply stop paying half your taxes. Again, the agreement is that the government exists by your consent, and if they deprive you of your property unjustly then you have the natural right to rescind that consent...
...which is about the time that men with guns, whose paychecks incidentally come out of your pocket, kick in your door and haul you away. Not too long after that, you will find yourself in front of a judge, whose paycheck also comes out of your pocket, and he will direct the previously mentioned men with guns to take all of your stuff. However, they likely won't be satisfied with merely taking your current stuff, so they will then lay claim to all future stuff, until they are finally satisfied, which may be never. Especially if they decide you're worth more in prison, which will preclude your ability to produce said future stuff. And if you resist at any point in this whole process, the men with guns will kill you.
The only difference between a socialist state and a criminal is that the socialist state is a smart criminal. Instead of taking all of your stuff, they let you keep just enough of it so that you can keep making more stuff for them to take. Whereas an ordinary criminal simply steals your things, a socialist state keeps you in perpetual servitude, thereby appropriating your life and liberty right along with your property. In the late 1800's, the more intelligent criminals saw the success of this model and started using it themselves, eventually becoming the mafia!
Today's liberal: "Everything that's wrong with me is your fault; therefore I deserve everything that you have."
Paul Stein: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kapkap/6189131120/
Tomorrow's liberal: "I will hurt you if I don't get my way."
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gypsyrock/6295706273/
But where did it go off the tracks? In the late 1800's, a guy named Thomas Hill Green came along. Whereas John Locke had seen mankind as naturally selfish, Green saw it as as inherently altruistic. Furthermore, he believed that we had a duty to each other, and, most devilish of all, he believed that the state was the natural mechanism by which to ensure that everyone was doing their duty to everyone else. This kind of "altruism at gunpoint" was the foundation of "social liberalism," otherwise known as modern American liberalism.
This is how the ideas of Marx and Engels began to trickle into American liberal politics, at which time the Great Depression came along as the perfect catalyst for the mass implementation of entitlements. Keynesian economics, which claims that only the state can run the economy, as opposed to the free markets, then took over completely. This included such things as minimum wage, government work programs, and artificial reduction in interest rates.
With the Great Depression and the advent of Keynesian economics came the New Deal, which was the beginning of the American welfare state. The New Deal opposed classical liberalism, blaming classical liberals for the depression, and it was at this time that we got our current definitions for liberal and conservative. Liberals were those who supported the New Deal, and conservatives were those who opposed it, clinging to their classical liberal ideology.
And while classical liberals were and are universally blamed for the Great Depression, people were overlooking one great big glaring problem: the boom of the 1920's wasn't caused by a free market economy. Going back to 1913, socially liberal president Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat, signed the Federal Reserve Act, effectively putting the economy in the hands of the federal government. By controlling interest rates, they could artificially stimulate the economy, circumventing natural economic growth and decline.
Failing to understand the cost of capital, the low interest rates of the 1920's created "free" money, leading to an artificial boom known today as the roaring twenties, which all came crashing down, as all bubbles must, in 1929. Between 1921 and 1929, the US money supply increased by 60%, necessarily creating rampant inflation as a side effect. This devaluation of the dollar, along with speculative investments, brought about an inevitable stock market crash as investors lost confidence in the artificially created boom cycle.
And the rest is history. The welfare state is still growing, the Federal Reserve is still strangling the free market, and classical liberals are still taking the blame.