Truck and Barter

Today's PoliSci lecture on international relations included a wonderful quote on the language of economics. While examining the alternatives to those darn dirty realists (my apologies to any classical realists) we examined the following pairings.

A follower of Realism is called a realist.
A follower of Marxism is called a Marxist.
A follower of Liberalism is called... well it's not a liberalist.

So my OSU PhD candidate instructor says, "Liberalist always sounded like something a communist might call a liberal."

More bizarre, he went on to say it was okay for the class to use the term "liberalist", but they would have to deal with snickering and dirty looks.

Here in America we could use a new term to differentiate between left-leaning liberals and generic freedom loving, free-market thinkers. Though I doubt liberalist would catch on.