[Sooth2222]

"Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy. Many elements of this ideology developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. As such, it is often seen as being the natural ideology of the industrial revolution and its subsequent capitalist system. The early liberal figures that libertarians now describe as their fellow "classical liberals" rejected many foundational assumptions which dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion, and focuses on individual freedom, reason, justice and tolerance. Such thinkers and their ideas helped to inspire the American Revolution and French Revolution."

To answer the question -- "Because the Bolsheviks hijacked the word since is sounds better than "Socialist" or "Communist" and most people are too lazy to pick up a dictionary."

It is a matter of fact that "Liberals" are not liberal.

[asp1]

I would actually call "liberals" today leftists. There is nothing "classically liberal" in their way of thinking at all.

[kjo]

Yes, you are right. Modern liberalism is Statism.

[Fiji Hill]

I have always considered Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher, to be the father of modern liberalism, and Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman, to be the father of modern conservatism.