Liberalism will remain moribund until contemporary liberals make this distinction clear to the general electorate.

The book principally examines interwar Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, with political and historiographical analysis by contemporary and post-war liberals, Marxists, and conservatives.

The writer Nikolai Leskov, who at the time of the emancipation was far from hostile to the cause of change, launched a virulent attack on contemporary "liberals" in May 1862.

But that is where John Gray thinks that contemporary liberals on both sides of the Atlantic get it wrong.

Carter draws a parallel between the 19th-century American Protestant elite's hostility to Roman Catholic parochial schools and the suspicion of religious schools displayed by contemporary secular liberals.

His conclusion: "The ideas expressed were far more consonant with the beliefs and preferences of contemporary American liberals than those of conservatives."

What contemporary American liberal do you most admire?

But of course contemporary academic liberals have no stomach for any of this.

There is also a message here for all partisans and all seasons - for contemporary liberals as well as Reagan nostalgists, and for anyone who's invested himself in the redemptive power of politics.

Scholars have also recognized a number of principles familiar to contemporary liberals in the works of several Sophists and in the Funeral Oration by Pericles.