Source: Brownstone Institute
by Bert Olivier
“Everywhere one looks today you see signs of the opposition between ‘conservatives’ and so-called ‘liberals.’ Sometimes conservatives are designated ‘far-right,’ and liberals ‘left-wing.’ Both terms appear to be self-explanatory, unless one keeps in mind that concepts do evolve historically. The term, ‘amateur,’ for example, used to have a very positive or affirmative meaning, namely someone who does something (like painting, or playing the piano) well, because they love doing it (‘amateur’ derives from the Latin for ‘love’), but today its meaning is pejorative, contrasting with the term, ‘professional,’ which means more or less what ‘amateur’ used to mean; namely, that it applies to someone who excels at what they do. Similarly, the term, ‘liberal’ has arguably undergone a semantic shift in recent times – one that places it at a considerable remove from its original historical meaning.” (02/23/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/are-the-liberals-of-today-really-liberals/