I've been writing a post a day in August. This is the big post that I've been building. In this post we will see how the term "liberal" became associated with the illiberal ideology of socialism.

The US Founders had a liberal arts education based on classical logic and steeped in Christian ethics. The founders fought a revolution to liberate the American colonies. They then applied classical logic to the question of liberty and created a constitutionally limited Republic with a relatively free people.

The US founders lived before the age of ideology. They would have associated their endeavors with the liberal tradition.

The liberal arts education was formulated by a Roman Senator named Cicero and was revived in Europe during the Renaissance. The three legs of the liberal arts are "language, logic and rhetoric."

People who receive a classical liberal are apt to prefer a free society to a monarchy.

This next sentence will astound some readers.

King George III did not like the US Founders. 

Seriously, he did not like the Founders. 

They weren't on his Christmas list. King George would have had them all hung if the opportunity arose.

King George sent his Hessian soldiers to suppress the American Revolution.

The royalty saw the liberal arts education as a threat.

The Hanoverian Kings of England were from Hanover Germany. They funded the German University system. After the Revolution, King George III tasked the German Universities with the job of creating a new education system that be favorable to the monarchy.

A large slew of philosophers including Kant, Hegel, Marx, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, etc., worked to create a new way of thinking called Modern Logic or more properly New Think.

Modern logic attacks the foundations of classical logic.

A primary tool in the modern arsenal is a tool called "sublation." 

Georg Hegel noticed that terms often took on contradictory meanings through the years. Hegel called this process "aufhebung" with the English translation being "sublate.'

This observation is not new. Back in the ancient world, Socrates noticed that many words had contradictory meanings. Socrates refused to write down his thoughts because he realized that his enemies (the Sophists) could simply change the meaning of his words and negate his arguments. 

It is possible to destroy anyone's arguments by changing the meaning of the terms used by the speaker.

Hegel was a philosopher for hire and he realized that one could use sublation as a weapon. 

If a philosopher takes the words of one's opponents and turns them inside out, then the philosopher can engineer the undoing of that opponent. 

For several centuries, people associated the term "liberal" with the ideas of a free society and republican governance. 

The first step to destroying is to destroy the terms the people used in their arguments for liberty.

BTW: This use of words as weapons is antithetical to the ideals of classical logic.

Aristotle was interested in a type of logical argument called a syllogism. Aristotle realized that a syllogism is only valid over given domain.

If one changes the definitions of a term, the the syllogisms based on that term are no longer valid. 

Because of this, classical logicians spend an inordinate amount of time defining terms and defending the definitions of terms.

Practitioners of New Think see words as weapons. All that matters is the current effect of a term. If a modern philosopher is unhappy with the direction a debate is going, the modern philosopher simply changes the definition of the terms and vilifies the opponent.

The partisans of the modern world took to New Think with a vengeance. 

Conservatism is a partisan ideology of the modern world. Partisans are driven by a desire for power. When partisans engage in discourse, they create partisan definitions based on the goals they wish to achieve.

The sad result is that Partisans have made mush with the English Language.

In today's essay, I will look at the sublation of the term "liberal."

## The Failure of the Liberal Party

The US Founders had a liberal arts education. They applied classical logic to the question of liberty and developed a Constitutionally limited Republic.

A large section of the French population had liberal arts education. However, a partisan group called the Jacobins took control of the National Assembly. One sees a huge amount of liberal rhetoric during the revolution, but the people running the government were illiberal.

The "Senat Conservateur" took advance of this situation. They denounced the first wave of Jacobins as "liberal ideologues" and installed a Conservative Populist named Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor.

This was the opening salvo in the sublation of the term "liberal." 

In the 1850s a group of English Parliamentarians were upset that Conservative policies led to a famine in the kingdom. They followed Sir Robert Peel out of the Conservative Party. Under the leadership of Sir William Gladstone the parliamentarians created the Liberal Party.

The platform of the Liberal Party was surprisingly similar to the ideas of the US Founders. The platform of the Liberal Party centered on free trade, rule of law, and limited government. On the social front, Liberals contemplated a dangerous idea called Freedom of Religion.

Freedom of Religion would mean allowing Catholics to vote. If Catholics could vote; the Irish Catholics would vote the English lords out of Ireland.

The Liberal Party fell apart over the issue of freedom of religion. The Conservatives changed their name the the Conservative and Union Party and enjoyed a brief spat of hegemony.

## The Opposition Party

The rules of Parliament are somewhat odd. When a political leader has sufficient votes, the leader forms a government and becomes the Prime Minister. 

Those who are opposed to the Prime Minister will form an opposition government.

The expressed views of the opposition governments are often contradictory. Imagine a simple budget. Some will see the budget as too large, others as two small. It is likely that members of "the opposition" will argue both views.

This does not mean that "the opposition" is insane. It simply means that "the opposition" refers to more than one position.

In the 1800s, there were many groups interested in the new ideologies of socialism and communism.  The groups included the Fabian Society and the Labour Party.

The Liberal Party formed a coalition with these groups.

Remember, the organizing principles of the liberal arts are grammar, logic and rhetoric. People with a liberal arts education learn how to think and not what to think.

People with a liberal arts education love to apply logic to the problems of the day. Aristotle, Cicero, the US Founders, Abraham Lincoln all advocated that statesmen should seek a middle way. Great thinkers of the liberal tradition apply logic to the problems of the day.

Anyway in the early 1900s, the Liberal Government under Lloyd George formed a coalition government with Labour Party and helped lay the foundations of the modern welfare state.

[The picture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#/media/File:ChurchillGeorge0001.jpg) shows Lloyd George with a fellow member of the Liberal Party named Winston Churchill discussing matters of state.

![ChurchillGeorge0001.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmaF97EAeZYPF35osFpnSfefzVYjyCKRPwXCYVMJDYVLLX/ChurchillGeorge0001.jpg)

The Liberal Party was replaced by the Labour Party as the primary opposition party soon after the above photo.

Most Liberals disliked the illiberal politics of the socialists. Many liberals MPs followed the lead of Winston Churchill and joined the Conservatives when Labour rose to power.

## Well, Folks. That Was It. That Was the Sublation of the Term "Liberal."

Well, folks, that was it. That was the famous sublation of the term "liberal." 

The Liberal Party formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. The coalition fell apart. Some Liberal MPs followed Churchill and joined the Conservatives. A few Liberals stuck with Labour.

This is when conservatives started calling socialists "liberals." 

Tories (aka the Conservatives) were still upset that the US founders broke up the empire. Using the term liberal for socialism allowed the Tories to lump all of their enemies in a single basket.

The Labour Party loved being called "liberal." The name game allowed socialists to pretend that socialism was part of the great liberal tradition that created the Republic of Rome, the Republic of Florence and the Republic at the heart of the USA.

By pretending that  the term "liberal" is a synonym for "socialism," advocates of socialism can position socialism as the natural progression of a modern society.

Socialism is an illiberal ideology. While politicians are able to use the sublation of the term liberal to their political advantage, it is harmful the to the people at large.

## Education Theory

Education in the United States was originally based on a the liberal arts. Again, I need to repeat, the liberal arts are Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric.

NOTE, the liberal arts teach people how to think. It does not teach people what to think.

The sublation of the term liberal was crucial in the campaign to remove the study of logic from the school curriculum.

### Destroying Arguments for Liberty

The sublation of the term "liberal" weakened arguments for liberty.

Aristotelian logic is a process that takes place in the minds of individual people. The study of the liberal arts trains people how to formulate and communicate ideas.

The reason I published this series of articles on #ProofOfBrain is because logic is the highest use of the human brain. The ability to engage reasoning is the one thing that makes humans different from other species.

People who learn logic quickly realize that humans need basic liberties to be able to engage in life in a civil society. If our schools taught logic, then students are likely to reason out that they need liberty to think.

Of course we could never teach the liberal arts in American schools because Conservatives despise the Liberal Arts as much as king George despised the US founders. 

Anyway, the game of equating the liberal arts tradition that created the US Constitution with socialism ended up creating a partisan divide with two parties that are fundamentally opposed to liberty.

## The Term "Liberal" is Gone Forever

Partisan discord is destroying the English language. I agree that the term "liberal" is gone forever.

However, there is always hope that the people will wake up and realize that partisans on both sides of the aisle have been playing a dangerous game of undermining our language in their quest for power.



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