Ahem, Hayek Was Not a Conservative

F.A. Hayek is an unlikely conservative hero. After all, this is a man who titled one of his most famous essays â??Why I Am Not a Conservative.â? He self-identified as a liberal â?? in the original sense of the word, which more or less means what we would today call libertarian. Since liberalism took on an entirely different meaning during the 20th century, Hayek wrote that he would settle for being called an Old Whig. But he could not stand to be called a conservative.