ABSTRACT
The "relevance of liberalism" is a peculiarly liberal question, for it was liberals who first raised the point that a social philosophy should be useful in solving changing social problems. If one compares the label "liberalism" with its neighbors-democracy, socialism, and communism—liberalism has one winning claim: it is the most unsettled and misapprehended term in the whole string. A major difficulty in assessing the accomplishments and inadequacies of liberalism resides precisely in the fact that some authors speak of the thing with only passing reference to the word, while other authors, following the word, are led astray by its secondary meanings and/or by the party and sectarian uses of the term. Liberalism praises and defends the individual and sustains this individual with that "security" that is his property—with a property as safety that has nothing to share with an economic vision of life.
