Progress on the Road to Serfdom

I should probably confess from the outset that I am a liberal, not of the contemporary sort, but of the classical sort. Having said this, however, I know that I’ve lost half of you already. In the topsy-turvey world of political discourse today, the so-called liberal part, the democrats, are far from liberal, and the so-called conservative party, the republicans, are close to being “liberal,” if not in their acts, then in their professed ideology. I am a “liberal” of the old school, characterized by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, as “respect for the individual [person] qua [person],” with “the recognition of [one’s] own views and tastes as supreme in [one’s] own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the belief that it is desirable that [people] should develop their own individual gifts and bents.” By this measure, both democrats and republicans are half-socialists.