There are multiple definitions of "liberal", but in the American context it's really stopped meaning anything about classical liberal concepts of personal liber

There are multiple definitions of "liberal", but in the American context it's really stopped meaning anything about classical liberal concepts of personal liberty (in speech in particular) and more about perspectives on moral and identity issues, it seems. It's really, from my mind: not-conservative, defined almost entirely in opposition to the aggressive reaction from the religious moral right in US politics. Anything beyond that is just a huge mix. Liberal across the Atlantic means something closer to its classic definition. One of the first challenges I have when discussing politics with Americans (and increasingly other Canadians) is precisely trying to define how I, as maybe a more "traditional" socialist radical, do not fit on the spectrum they've defined there. I share a disgust with the conservative right, am secular, and broadly call myself a feminist or anti-racist but when it moves to bread and butter issues, gun control, or some identity politics stuff... there's basically no correspondence... (Here in Canada, it's muddled in different ways, where "Liberal" is a political party, defined mainly by "whatever will win an election" than any constant ideological focus. Right now it's vaguely "left" (in so far as it takes "left" positions on cultural issues, combined with some kind of neo-Keynesian budgetary spending model, but combined with low corporate taxes) but in my mind it's really just a kind of croneyism... but that's a rant. We have a separate, sometimes-successful, social democratic party which sorta muddies any kind of comparisons to the US, but comparisons to the UK also don't work because our NDP isn't really like their Labour party, either... though it might want to be)