As prelude to defense of the progressive version of liberalism, Peter Berkowitz in Liberalism in the Progressive -- and in the Larger -- Sense, offers are good summary of the history of the term.

Liberalism is to me the embrace of individualism and equalitarianism.

The term “liberalism” ranks among the most contested in our political lexicon. It should also be regarded as among the most vital.

In the large sense, liberalism names the modern tradition of freedom. Liberalism so understood was the dominant strand in our nation’s founding. Appreciating the standard accusations against it and why it is worthy of defense is crucial to conserving the best of the American constitutional tradition.

Since Marx and through today’s purveyors of identity politics, critics on the left have condemned liberalism for supplying an ideological justification for a corrupt status quo. The left accuses liberalism of feeding off of, and perpetuating, exploitation and inequality. It asserts that members of the privileged class — the bourgeoisie in the 19th century, white men today — wrap themselves in claims about universal reason, fundamental rights, and the rule of law that supposedly apply to everyone but in reality advance the interests of the favored few while oppressing the rest.

Since the rise in the late-18th and early-19th centuries of the romantic and Catholic reactions against the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, critics on the right have denounced liberalism for falsifying human nature, dissolving the organic bonds of family and community, and undermining devotion to transcendent ends and sacred duties. Taking up these themes in much-discussed books last year, Patrick Deneen and Yoram Hazony both identified 17th-century Englishman John Locke as the intellectual mastermind who defrauded modernity by grossly exaggerating the powers of reason to guide human affairs, reducing politics to a matter of contract and the formalities of rights and rules, and debasing freedom into the satisfaction of appetites and doing as one pleases.

Few have risen to liberalism’s defense against the assaults from the left and right....