The confusion is compounded, perhaps, when one learns that modern liberals have little in common with classical liberals, but they have much in common with progressives and are essentially identical with them.
From time to time I've posted on VP a description of the differences between the political left and right and a discussion of where communists, fascists, conservatives, socialists and liberals all fall on the political spectrum, but Jonah Goldberg in his excellent and very informative 2007 book Liberal Fascism offers another way to parse the difference between classical liberals, progressives, conservatives and modern liberals.
He writes:
In the past "liberalism" had referred to political and economic liberty as understood by Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith. For them, the ultimate desideratum was maximum individual freedom under the benign protection of a minimalist state.This is what's called "classical" liberalism and today's conservatives are called that because they wish to return to or "conserve" this classical idea of human liberty. Small government and maximum individual freedom consistent with a healthy community.
Goldberg continues:
The progressives, led by [John] Dewey (1859-1952), subtly changed the meaning of this term...[construing it instead] as the alleviation of material and educational poverty, and liberation from old dogmas and faiths [particularly Christian faith and dogma].Progressivism arose in the early decades of the 20th century and was especially influential in the administration of Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945). Progressives believe that problems are best addressed by a strong federal government, i.e. the state.
For progressives liberty no longer meant freedom from tyranny, but freedom from want, freedom to be a "constructive" citizen.
For this reason individual liberty should give way to the power of the state and that the most efficient government is one in which power is centralized in the federal bureaucracy, staffed by "experts."
Since progressives favor a powerful central government or state they're often called "statists."
An example of what progressives believed the state could and should do is outlined in Roosevelt's "second Bill of Rights" (1944) in which he declared that the state must provide,
a "new basis of security and prosperity," the right to "a useful and remunerative job," "a decent home," "adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health," adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment," and "a good education."This second Bill of Rights remains, as Goldberg, says, "the spiritual lodestar of liberal aspirations to this day."
To achieve all this it's necessary that the state must expand in size and power and individual freedoms must therefore diminish. The government must become a national "nanny," providing citizens with life's necessities and protecting them from life's vicissitudes.
It's a view satirized in this short video, the first episode in a series of five: This is not the role that classical liberals envisioned for government, but it is the role that modern liberals (progressives) believe government should fill.
Conservatives, are by nature wary of "big government." President Ronald Reagan, a conservative, famously quipped that "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Conservatives believe that the more government grows - the more authority it's granted over an individual's ability to make his/her own decisions - the more bureaucratic, unresponsive, expensive and oppressive it becomes.
In sum, then, conservatives are in many ways very much like classical liberals whereas contemporary liberals, or progressives, are statists and hold views about the role of government quite the opposite of the classical liberals of the Enlightenment.
