If you read The Road to Serfdom (Reader’s Digest Condensed Version here), you will see that FA Hayek used the term “liberal” to denote people who today would be called “conservatives” in America. That is because Hayek, an Austrian, learned English in America before the meaning of “liberal” was essentially inverted, according to Safire's New Political Dictionary, in the 1920s. And the meaning of “liberal” was not changed in Britain, where Hayek wrote Serfdom during WWII.
Before I proceed with my opinion, I just want to say that in my opinion, it’s all true, re: liberal vs conservative, and I fully understand the etymology of the terms and how they changed over time, but here is the problem:
The battle for the language in that respect is over, IMO. Leftists had their way with it before the real liberals caught on in time to fight it, and there is no way to undo it at this point.
It is a battle that I simply don’t think can be fought and won. And all it will do is confuse people and waste our (conservatives) time.
I think everyone has these kinds of battles over certain linguistic aspects in nomenclature and terminology, some we fight, some we simply cut our losses. In my case, liberal-conservative is something I don’t see changing because I don’t think it can be done. For me, conservative in the political arena is the opposite of liberal in that arena, and I know I am against that diametrically opposed thing and everything it stands for.
I have things I have a harder time surrendering on, for example gay-homosexual. So in my personal life, I fight that battle.
The whole liberal-conservative corruption came about long before I really understood the labels, before I was even born. I just don’t see how making that word the battlefield is going to change the issue. I fully agree with the author that caving in has grave consequences all of its own, but I simply think the effort required to reverse it would be huge, and the mental capacity of people to absorb the change is...lacking, to be polite.