The protectionists, in their quest to fight the popularity of free-trade, had been sufficiently clever to make the word unpopular.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 170 to 178 (in French)
Libre-échange, June 13th, 1847

In this speech, Frédéric Bastiat reviews the action of the League for Free-Trade at the end of its first year of existence.

I chose today’s quote for its present relevance and the way it shows how words can be powerful. Nowadays in France indeed, the word “libéral”, sometimes saddled with prefixes like neo- or ultra-, is often used as an insult or with disdain. When we think about the etymology of the word – liberty – this is absolutely incredible! In the United States however, the word “liberal” has been adopted by the constructivists in the 1930’s and has now become an insult describing something encompassing anything but liberty for those who are truly in the camp of liberty and call themselves “libertarian”.

Obviously, these types of confusions were already used in the first half of the 19th century by the political opponents of liberalism and I do not see how to fight against that in any other way than claiming loud and clear that liberty is one of the noblest values and that it is appropriate to be proud of calling oneself liberal, even if some people see it as an insult or divert its meaning.