Industry Figure Tom Chappell

Britain’s most famous conservative journal (they would call themselves liberal), The Economist, endorsed John Kerry for President of the United States.

They did so “with a heavy heart,” but as they put it on their cover, the choice was between…

“The incompetent or the incoherent?”
A paragraph from their history demonstrates how the popular meaning of a word can drift over time: when the newspaper was founded, the word “Liberal” referred to being in favor of limited government and free trade:

“Established in 1843 to campaign on one of the great political issues of the day, The Economist remains, in the second half of its second century, true to the principles of its founder. James Wilson, a hat maker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, believed in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. Though the protectionist Corn Laws which inspired Wilson to start The Economist were repealed in 1846, the newspaper has lived on, never abandoning its commitment to the classical 19th-century Liberal ideas of its founder.”