Spencer Saw the NEW Liberalism As Paternalism; It Called for State Intervention in Voluntary Relationships on the Grounds that the State Has the Parental-Like Duty to Protect Individuals from Their Own Decisions

Old liberals – or what Spencer preferred to call “true” liberals – disliked the implication of the modifier “new,” which suggested something progressive, as if new liberals had improved on the theory of old liberalism while retaining what was worthwhile and discarding what had become obsolete. The term “liberal” carried favorable connotations; in addition to its association with “liberty” (“liberal” derives from liber, the Latin word for “free”), the adjectival form had long been used to mean magnanimous, open-minded, and tolerant. The label therefore suggested something more than a political doctrine; it suggested a humanistic outlook, a moral and social ideology in which the happiness of the individual is a key concern.

Given these implications, it is understandable why many social reformers who disliked the laissez- faire tendencies of traditional liberalism did not wish to jettison the label. They claimed that the new liberalism was based on a more sophisticated notion of freedom and therefore represented intellectual progress. As Spencer viewed the matter, though, the new liberalism was essentially old wine in a new bottle. The old wine in this case was paternalism, a doctrine that called for state intervention in voluntary relationships on the grounds that the state has the parental-like duty to protect individuals from the potentially harmful effects of their own uncoerced decisions and actions.

--George H. Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), e-book.