Alan Wolfe says there’s no distinction between them. Jonah Goldberg says that this is palpable nonsense:

Classical liberalism believed in objective rules constraining and delineating the role of government. Modern liberalism, born at the beginning of the twentieth century, holds that there are no rules rooted outside the prevailing sentiments of liberals themselves. It’s all up to what liberals decide is necessary. Stuart Chase — who reportedly coined the phrase “the New Deal” — argued that it was vital that liberals be put in charge of an “economic dictatorship.” “Why,” he asked, “should the Russians have all the fun remaking the world?” Thurmond Arnold, one of the intellectual titans of the New Deal, defined liberalism as “deuces wild.” Dewey believed there was no such thing as natural rights and argued for things like “social control.” Wilson believed that the U.S. Constitution — a classically liberal document, I think it’s fair to say — needed to be scrapped for a new, living constitution. Call me crazy, but I find these to be contrary, not merely “evolutionary” perspectives.

And he has some interesting thoughts from Albert Jay Nock:

…one never knew what Liberals would do, and their power of self-persuasion is such that only God knows what they would not do. As casuists, they make Gury and St. Alfonso dei Liguori look like bush-leaguers. On every point of conventional morality, all the Liberals I have personally known were very trustworthy. They were great fellows for the Larger Good, but it would have to be pretty large before they would alienate your wife’s affections or steal your watch. But on any point of intellectual integrity, there is not one of them whom I would trust for ten minutes alone in a room with a red-hot stove, unless the stove were comparatively valueless.

Liberals generally,—there may have been exceptions, but I do not know who they were,—joined in the agitation for an income-tax, in utter disregard of the fact that it meant writing the principle of absolutism into the Constitution. Nor did they give a moment’s thought to the appalling social effects of an income-tax; I never once heard this aspect of the matter discussed. Liberals were also active in promoting the “democratic” movement for the popular election of senators. It certainly took no great perspicacity to see that these two measures would straightway ease our political system into collectivism as soon as some Eubulus, some mass-man overgifted with sagacity, should manoeuvre himself into popular leadership; and in the nature of things, this would not be long.

All too prophetic.

[Early evening update]

Another nice find on Nock and liberalism:

The facts are clearly apparent. We now see on all sides the extraordinary spectacle of Liberals doing their best to destroy the cardinal freedoms and immunities which Liberals formerly defended, while all the forces which are historically and traditionally known as Tory or Conservative are arrayed in defense of those freedoms. Furthermore we see Liberals vehemently vilifying those who hold to the original basic principles of Liberalism, denouncing them as enemies of society, and doing all they can to discredit and disable them. These two are probably the strangest anomalies that recent history presents.

Of course, it’s become an old story by now.