If conservatives want to begin the process of refashioning their image, they can start out with the most fundamental rebranding technique of all: changing their name.That’s, after all, what the Left did. In the two decades since Ronald Reagan turned the term “liberal” into a kind of epithet, liberals have chosen to drop it and call themselves “progressives.”And now it’s time for the Right to discard the term “conservative” and start describing themselves as … liberals.That’s right, liberals.If Democrats are going to leave “liberal” lying around, conservatives should immediately scoop it up and make it their own. Because it was theirs to begin with.Many of you may be aware that the word “liberal” has its roots in the Enlightenment and the struggle to prop up the individual against political tyranny. This went hand in glove with economic theories that emphasized the private property rights and laissez-faire economics.
and this article suggest the republicans confiscate this name the last 2 sentences of last paragraph null and void that assumption not to mention creates a oxymoron.These were the precepts upon which a group of freedom-loving individuals, eventually known as the Founding Fathers, established the United States of America.
But by the late 19th-century, the nearly unfettered power wielded over the lives of workers by giant corporations began to seem itself a kind of tyranny, and up arose the “progressive” movement led in the early years of the 20th century by reformers like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
After his election in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt took up the progressive cause of Wilson, but with a substantial public relations twist: he slowly shed the term “progressive,” which came to be associated with the hard left, stole the term “liberal” from the right, and adopted its use for his radical expansion of government.
For Roosevelt, this made plenty of sense. First of all, it let him rub his thumb firmly in the eye of his Republican opponents, who now had an identity crisis on their hands. Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, was incensed that FDR was purloining the term.
this in it's self shows why the republicans lost they failed to learn the lesson of adaptation to change, arrogance is their Achilles Heal it prevents them from excepting the truth if you don't except it you can not speak it, that is their conundrum.
