I think the American use of "liberal" comes from social liberalism [1], which is certainly to the left of classical liberalism. In Europe "liberal" is more trad

I think the American use of "liberal" comes from social liberalism [1], which is certainly to the left of classical liberalism. In Europe "liberal" is more traditionally use to mean classical liberalism, hence the discrepancy. But both usages seem proper to me. That said, we've been hearing about social liberalism quite a lot over the last few months in France. The left tends to brand itself as socialist, so "social democrat" and "social liberal" are rather foreign to our traditional political scene. But it is changing fast: the current president, Hollande, is now usually depicted as a social democrat by the media, and the soon to become president (according to the current polls [2]) Macron is usually depicted as a social liberal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism [2] At this point in time it seems hard to imagine that he would not win. But of course things can change very quickly: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_sondages_sur_l%27%C3%A9lection_pr%C3%A9sidentielle_fran%C3%A7aise_de_2017#/media/File:Evolution_des_intentions_de_vote_%C3%A0_l%27%C3%A9lection_pr%C3%A9sidentielle_2017.png https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_sondages_sur_l%27%C3%...