“Terms like ‘liberalism’ or ‘democracy,’ ‘capitalism’ or ‘socialism,’ today no longer stand for coherent systems of ideas,” Hayek observed shortly after the conclusion of World War II. He saw them instead as “aggregations of quite heterogeneous principles and facts” that had become linked to certain words by means of a “historical accident.” … And the word “liberal”— otherwise a favorite— had been irrevocably altered by its increasing association with a progressive worldview. … We cannot rely on static renditions of the philosophies of the present if we wish to understand the dynamics of an earlier time.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 34