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  • MediaDB / «Liberalism as a word and symbol. The fight for the liberal brand in the USA" Ronald Rotunda: download fb2, read online

    About the book: 2016 / R. Rotunda (born 1945) is a famous American lawyer, specialist in constitutional law. His short study, “Politics of Language: Liberalism as Word and Symbol,” is probably the only one of its kind that explains how the words “liberalism” and “liberals” changed the meaning of the words “liberalism” and “liberals” so mysteriously in the United States. There, liberals strangely advocate comprehensive government intervention in the economy. The author shows that this did not happen by itself, but as a result of a conscious substitution of concepts by F. Roosevelt, who was looking for a suitable verbal label for his program of economic regulation. To do this, he chose the word “liberal,” which was not used in the United States, but was prestigious and had only favorable associations. It so happened that at the same time H. Hoover claimed the rights to this brand, and the outcome of the dispute was decided during the election campaigns of 1932-1940. This story, which forms the plot center of the book, is preceded by interesting reflections by the author on the role of symbols in politics and a brief overview of the history of the use of the words “liberal” and “liberal” as a designation of political program in England and the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries.