In history a decade is an eyeblink. In a Journal devoted to classical liberalism and complexity, it is an appropriate time to reflect on core principles and enduring themes. We should reflect, as Hayek continually noted, on purging oversimplifications and well-meaning political attempts to "improve" upon the actual, which is to say the original, liberal theory of social organization. That theory coalesced primarily in writings of the Scottish moralists of the 18th century, such as David Hume, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith. We must constantly re-emphasize that, unlike other political views, liberalism as a political position is based upon negative prohibitions to actions, not prescriptions of particular actions that must be performed. We need to go "back to the future" to understand that it is actual liberalism, rather than socialism (as contemporary progressivists constantly but falsely claim) which has never actually been practiced. The progressivist perversion of liberalism, found today in cultural Marxism and "market" socialism, requiring conscious, directed central planning and defined control structures, has in fact been attempted in the past, and, because of its internal structural limitations (detailed beautifully a century ago by Mises (1981), and eighty years ago by Popper (2011, 2013), can never be achieved. Inevitably backwards oriented to tribal existence, progressivist alternatives overstate the positive effects that can be achieved by deliberate intervention into complex social phenomena. In following such "alternatives," unforeseen negative consequences stifle spontaneous organization, exacerbating problems they were supposed to cure, inevitably creating additional new ones. Liberalism, as a spontaneously evolving series of institutions and constraints on behavior, simply gradually abandons what does not succeed in favor of alternatives that in fact still work. That is the sense in which it is internally empirically driven, and retains the testability of actual scientific fields. This is why there are no final or "certain" solutions, only compromises. Progressivism is not internally driven, and (exactly like conservatism) has to respond in "catch up" fashion to changes that are external to its stated programs. The political "theory" framework formulation of evolutionary liberalism is found primarily in the later work of Hayek (especially 1979, 1983, and 1989). In that framework, liberalism has not failed and is not in need of reformulation or supplementation, but rather has not yet overcome powerful emotional resistance and good sounding ideas from primitivism and tribalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]