GOVERNMENT and markets both have their place in a decent society, President Obama suggested in his Inaugural Address, but can become a force for ill if they are without restraint. Missing from Mr. Obama’s address was only the proper name of the political philosophy, coded into the constitutional DNA of the United States, that proposes this and other balances: liberalism.

the semantics of liberalism - "this worldwide conceptual cacophony,...[maybe] we should abandon the term, or at least dismantle it into component parts with plainer meanings."

Op-Ed Contributor - A Liberal Translation - NYTimes.com