Here is a research assignment that will take just a few minutes:
1- Go to the Google Books Ngram Viewer here.
2- Check the “case insensitive” box.
3- Set the starting year to 1750 and the ending year to 1820.
4- Clear the phrases box and paste in instead the following: liberal principles, liberal policy, liberal system, liberal plan, liberal ideas, liberal government , and click “Search lots of books”.
Ponder the result.
5- Set the starting year to 1870 and the ending year to 1940, and in the phrases box paste in instead the following: old liberalism, new liberalism , and click “Search lots of books”.
Ponder the result.
6- Keep the starting date at 1870 and set the ending year to 1980, and in the phrases box paste in instead the following: social justice, (economic justice*10), equal opportunity, (economic equality*5), equality of opportunity, (bundle of rights*40) , and click “Search lots of books”.
Ponder the results.
Dan Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
READER COMMENTS
Samuel Pepys
Feb 12 2020 at 12:57pm
Then do: (libertarian*20),capitalism,(free market*10)
Ponder the results.
Daniel Klein
Feb 13 2020 at 4:40pm
Very good. Thanks.
Like Deirdre McCloskey, I regard “capitalism” as another unfortunate development rising up from 1890 alongside so many others.
“libertarianism” emerges partly because the old political meaning of “liberal” had been so battered, and alas relinquished by many of its supporters.
Samuel Pepys
Feb 12 2020 at 1:24pm
Then, for 1870 to 1980, type: (libertarian*20),capitalism,(free market*10)
JFA
Feb 12 2020 at 2:17pm
How about you just post the results? You’d probably get a bit more engagement.
mbka
Feb 12 2020 at 9:20pm
I just did the exercise, but no spark came to enlighten me. What does it all mean? “lberal” means very different things to different people and eras, not to mention contexts.
So no spark here, in spite of the heavily, heavily method of doing “research”. I mean, in this day and age, shouldn’t you first posit hypothesis and expected result, and THEN hunt for data? Doing it the other way round, first hunting for interesting looking curves, then explaining the results, is begging for “just so” explanations – an exercise in confirmation bias.
Daniel Klein
Feb 12 2020 at 10:47pm
Hi MBKA,
The expressions of the first search are political. The charted lines start from zero. The picture tells us when “liberal” took on its first political meaning. To understand that meaning of “liberal” we need to understand how people used those terms in those decades. (The short answer is Adam Smith.)
The expressions of the second search show that people started using “liberalism” to mean something different than it used to. That is why people began to distinguish between “new” and “old.”
The expressions of the third search tell us what else rose up with “new liberalism.” That period is the great watershed—not the 1960s, not the 1930s, but further back, starting near 1890.
Miguel Madeira
Feb 13 2020 at 7:09am
Most entries seems to be something about Ireland and/or colonial policy; clicking in the entries, they are, of course, about very obscure issues written in an archaic way (they are books of the end of XVIII century, after all), but I will guess that “liberal” in these times are largley about the rights of Irish Catholics.
mbka
Feb 12 2020 at 9:27pm
Here’s the same thing repeated for nation/nationalism, and patriot/patriotism, between 1750 and 2018.
This one’s actually more interesting and gives me hope, sort of – the ling term trend is not what I would have thought.
Note to self: you only learn when you get unexpected results.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nation%2C+nationalism&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1750&year_end=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=1&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cnation%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bnation%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BNation%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cnationalism%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bnationalism%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BNationalism%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BNATIONALISM%3B%2Cc0
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=patriot%2Cpatriotism&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1750&year_end=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=1&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cpatriot%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bpatriot%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPatriot%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPATRIOT%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cpatriotism%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bpatriotism%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPatriotism%3B%2Cc0#t4%3B%2Cpatriot%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bpatriot%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPatriot%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPATRIOT%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cpatriotism%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bpatriotism%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPatriotism%3B%2Cc0
Jon Murphy
Feb 13 2020 at 11:25am
I think something is up with your ngrams. For example, it seems to think that exactly zero books were published with the word “nationalism” between 2006 and 2018. I have several books on my bookshelf that say otherwise…
mbka
Feb 13 2020 at 7:44pm
Jon,
smoothing / data collection, onviously an artefact. Not that I know the algorithm, but it looks like a typical end of series artefact.
Jon Murphy
Feb 13 2020 at 11:20pm
Yeah looks like that’s the case.
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
Feb 13 2020 at 6:04pm
Dears,
We need to take back the word liberal, as in Smith’s “the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.” It refers in its political sense (its other sense is “open-handed, generous”) of course to a society of non-slaves, from Latin liber = free, as against enslaved. David Schmidtz notes that it is a universal right to say No. I have recently started saying that it is the political theory pf a society of adults–no parents ruling, no king as Daddy.
Regards,
Deirdre
Thaomas
Feb 14 2020 at 5:51am
“neoliberalism” took off about 1980. So what?
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