Liberal democrats circumvent this objection in such a way that they attribute the term “liberal” to everything they think succeeded in making a breakthrough in the walls of oppression and authority. This allows them to accept that Socrates was a “liberal” compared to Plato; the Sophists were liberals compared to Socrates; Ockham compared to St. Thomas; Erasmus compared to Luther; Luther compared to Calvin, and so on. In this somewhat bizarre view, liberalism—whether democratic or not yet democratic—existed in Western culture from the very beginning but only in the modern day did it gain
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