Is it time to drop the word “liberal”? A response to Rod Liddle

Does "liberal" still mean what classical liberals want it to mean?

Some British commentators have the annoying habit of using the word “liberal” when they mean “left-wing”. It is annoying for various reasons. Firstly, it feels like an unthinking copy-and-paste adoption of American English. Yes, America is bigger, and especially online, the Anglosphere feels increasingly like one single country. But then, the Swiss and the Austrians don’t just copy and paste everything the Germans say, and the Spaniards certainly don’t easily adopt Mexican expressions.

More importantly, though, the commentators I am talking about often make good points, which I would like to quote. But it looks silly if approvingly quote people slagging off “liberals” while also calling myself a liberal.

Thirdly, it is also completely unnecessary, because there already is a perfectly good term to describe left-wing beliefs, which is understood in all English-speaking countries and beyond. That term is “left-wing”.

Thus far, I had assumed that these commentators just do so unthinkingly, and that they would not know how to defend that habit when challenged. But then one of them, Rod Liddle, wrote an article for the Spectator, in which he defended his peculiar use of “liberal”, and urged old-schools liberals to give up on the word altogether.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Here's what prompted Liddle to write this:

“I was making my way across the road from St Pancras to King’s Cross when I noticed a large bearded man blundering towards me, dodging the traffic, with a look of great urgency on his face. […] [H]e caught me up and said, with some force: ‘Left-wingers are NOT liberal!’ And then repeated it, even louder. It seemed a somewhat random statement to risk getting mown down by a bus for – a bit as if he’d said: ‘Herons are NOT waterfowl.’”

I should clarify two things here:

1. No, that man was not me.

2. But I know who it was, and he’s right. I’m neutral on the heron/waterfowl question, but left-wingers really are not liberal.

Liddle carries on:

“[A] sizeable tranche of obdurate, older and usually male readers […] greatly object to me using the term ‘liberal’ […] directed at the people who foist upon us all manner of

right-on, reason-defying idiocies. The objectors […] consider themselves the heirs to the Whigs […]

Classical Liberals, I suppose, in short. Tolerant, laissez-faire, free market, small state […]

But what these undoubtedly fine people do not realise is firstly that language is transformational and that ‘liberal’ no longer really means what they want it to mean – time has moved on. […] Meanwhile they are left behind, identifying with an appellation which now means almost the precise opposite of what they wish it to mean.”

I agree with Liddle on the general principle. Words have no objective meaning. They mean whatever people think they mean. Collectively, we really can be Humpty Dumpty. If we all agree that “green” means “red” and that “red” means “green”, then “green” really does mean “red”, and “red” really does mean “green”.

That is why, when I write for an American publication, I do not insist on using the word “liberal”. I know that it means something different to them, and that’s fine.

But what does “liberalism” mean to a British audience?

Who uses the word “liberal”, and how? Unfortunately, we cannot know for sure. I have seen surveys that try to tease out what people think “socialism” or “socialist” means, but I have not seen an equivalent survey that tries to do the same for liberalism. So we cannot settle the matter on this basis. What we can do instead is look at who habitually uses the word (or variations of it), and what they mean by it.

We should start with the very people Liddle erroneously calls “liberals”. They are Britain’s cultural agenda-setters, so their use of language matters more than anyone else’s. So it is worth noting that these people do not call themselves “liberals”. They would accept “left-wing”, “socialist” and “progressive” as labels, and perhaps “radical Left”, but certainly not “liberal”. If they wanted to appropriate that label, they could probably do it. But they're not trying to. They don't want it. When they talk about “liberals”, it is to describe someone else, and usually pejoratively so. They use it to refer to soggy Centrist Dads, or, more commonly, they use it with the prefix “neo-”, to refer to organisations such as the Institute of Economic Affairs or the Adam Smith Institute.

When they do the latter, they usually mischaracterise the meaning, attacking a silly caricature of liberalism (e.g. “trickle-down economics”) rather than actual liberalism. But that’s just the Left being the Left. They may not understand what (neo-)liberals believe, but at least they know who the (neo-)liberals are: us.

If we go by self-ID, Liddle’s usage wouldn’t even work that well in America. Yes, in American English, “liberal” means “left-wing” – but more in the sense of “centre-Left” than "far-Left”. Mainstream Democrats are “liberals” in the American sense. Socialists and the ultra-woke are not. In America, the Clintons, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are liberals. Bernie Sanders, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi are not. In fact, socialist American publications such as Jacobin and Current Affairs often use “liberal” pejoratively, in the sense of “fake Left”.

Again, words have no objective meaning. If the vast majority of people used “liberal” in the way in which Rod Liddle does, then that is what “liberal” would mean, and I would accept it, and pick a different label. But they don’t. They don’t even do that in America, and much less so in Britain. The only people in Britain who use “liberal” in the sense of “woke” are Right-coded anti-woke Culture Warriors. Put differently, the only people who use “liberal” in the way Rod Liddle does are people like Rod Liddle.

The futile quest to redefine words

Halfway though the article, Liddle starts to do the very thing he accuses old-school liberals of doing: trying to redefine words in a way that is at odds with the way the vast majority of people use it. He tries to redefine “left-wing” to mean “economically interventionist but not woke”. This would, of course, exclude major sections of the modern Left, which is Liddle’s intention:

“I do not think identity politics has anything to do with the left […]

I will not refer to Stonewall and Black Lives Matter […] as left-wing. They are not.”

Come on! Really? Let’s do a survey which asks “Where do you see the activist group Black Lives Matter (BLM) on the political spectrum? Would you describe them as very left-wing, moderately left-wing, centrist, moderately right-wing or very right-wing?” Or rather, let’s not. Because it is completely obvious what the result of such a survey would be. Among those respondents who have heard of BLM, 96% would classify them as “very left-wing”. (That’s 100% minus the Lizardman’s Constant and minus Rod Liddle.)

Liddle also refuses to call the Left “progressive”, because “that [...] has the whiff of historical inevitability about it and suggests that they are correct. It is not ‘progressive’ [...] to disavow proven science, for example.”

This is, of course, true if we take the literal meaning of “progressive”, but that is a ship which has sailed long ago. “Progressive” now means “BLM, Stonewall and Mermaids”. It shouldn’t, logically. But language isn’t logical.

What Liddle does not realise is firstly that language is transformational and that ‘left-wing’ and ‘progressive’ no longer really mean what he wants it to mean – time has moved on. Meanwhile he is left behind, identifying with appellations which now mean almost the precise opposite of what he wishes them to mean.

Liberals vs progressives

The short summary of Liddle’s argument thus far is that “liberal” now means “woke” rather than “classical liberal”, which is something very different: one is “almost the precise opposite” of the other, even. But at the end of the article, he suddenly pivots to saying that they are not so different from each other after all:

"It is dictionary-definition liberal [...] to allow people to define themselves as whatever they think they are on any specific day of the week."

Hang on. Whether people should be “allowed” to define themselves as whatever they think they are was never the contentious question. Of course they should. How are you going to stop them? The question is whether some people should have the right to force others to go along with their self-definition, and call the police if they don’t. That is the big difference between a liberal and a progressive. As Marc Glendening explains in Transgender Ideology: A new threat to liberal values:

“[The] transgender-ideological movement […] has sought to go far beyond establishing the right of individuals to assert a sex-related identity of their choice. Such an entitlement should not be, and never has been, denied. Rather, the objective of the campaign has become the imposition on other individuals of a wide-ranging series of obligations.”

Conclusion

Liddle’s argument is a mess:

Liberals should stop calling themselves liberals, because that word now means “woke”, which is something completely different. Except, it isn’t actually that different at all, because liberals and the woke are more alike than they realise. There is no point trying to redefine terms; whatever the most widespread use is is the correct one. Except for “left-wing” and “progressive”, which we should use in an eccentric way that is completely at odds with how everyone else uses them these days. We should call woke progressives “liberals”, even though woke progressives never call themselves that, and the people who do call themselves that should stop doing so. Sorry Rod, but I’m not buying it.

I’m not saying there are no ambiguities around the word “liberal”, and that it never causes misunderstandings. But I have been using that label for 25 years now, and most of the time, people more or less get what I’m trying to say. They certainly never mistake me for a woke progressive. They don't mistake me for a LibDem either, despite that party's best effort to misappropriate and ruin that label.

If you use "liberal" in the old-fashioned sense, you have the dictionary on your side, and you have the country's cultural establishment on your side as well, even if they use it pejoratively. So keep doing it. You owe it to the unknown large bearded man, who risked getting mown down by a bus for it.