MANILA -- Today, hardly another political term is as misapprehended and misrepresented as is "liberal." A case in point is the United States in the runup to the presidential elections. For partisan reasons, the Republicans and the so-called neoconservatives have gone on a rampage to discredit liberalism. If you listen to President George W. Bush's campaign speeches, you get the impression that "liberal" is a four-letter-word.
The absurdity of this political onslaught becomes apparent when the conservatives portray themselves as the champions of freedom, thereby usurping the very basic ideological concept liberals invented some three centuries ago and have fought for ever since.
Liberalism started out as a set of ideas and principles that influenced political movements and governments, and eventually transformed societies and their constitutional orders more or less everywhere in the world.