Liberal

Liberal, the word is related to Libertarian. They were almost interchangeable, until various Socialists took it over.  The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek explains where it all went wrong while the Wiki gets it wrong with Liberal Democracy.

#William S. Lind goes over the same ground and puts his view more bluntly, saying that #Liberal Democracy is a Contradiction

Classical Liberalism ex Wiki
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Classical liberalism is a political philosophy and ideology belonging to liberalism in which primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the government. The philosophy emerged as a response to the Industrial Revolution and urbanization in the 19th century in Europe and the United States.^[1] It advocates civil liberties with a limited government under the rule of law, and belief in laissez-faire economic policy.^{[2][3][4][2][5][4]} Classical liberalism is built on ideas that had already arisen by the end of the 18th century, such as selected ideas of Adam Smith, John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, stressing the belief in free market and natural law,^[6] utilitarianism,^[7] and progress.^[8] Classical liberals were more suspicious than conservatives of all but the most minimal government^[9] and, adopting Thomas Hobbes's theory of government, they believed government had been created by individuals to protect themselves from one another.^[10]
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This little Wiki article gives us some idea of what it meant to the people who passed that way. Liberty & limited government sound pretty good to me, to lots  of us. The current crop of them are more akin to power crazed Socialists.

 

Modern Liberalism In America ex Wiki
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Modern American liberalism combines social liberalism with support for social justice and a mixed economy. American liberal causes include voting rights for African Americans, abortion rights for women, gay rights and government programs such as education and health care.^[1] It has its roots in Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry S. Truman's Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. Conservatives oppose liberals on most issues; the relationship between liberal and progressive is debated.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}

Keynesian economic theory has played a central role in the economic philosophy of modern American liberals.^[8] The argument has been that national prosperity requires government management of the macroeconomy, to keep unemployment low, inflation in check, and growth high.^[8]

John F. Kennedy defined a liberal as follows:^[9][10]

...someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'.

Modern American liberals value institutions that defend against economic inequality. In The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), by Paul Krugman, p. 267, he states: "I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it." Liberals often point to the widespread prosperity enjoyed under a mixed economy in the years since World War II.^[11][12] They believe liberty exists when access to necessities like health care and economic opportunity are available to all,^[13] and they champion the protection of the environment.^[14][15] Modern American liberalism is typically associated with the Democratic Party, as modern American conservatism is typically associated with the Republican Party.^[16]

How voters identify themselves has been fairly stable over the last two decades. As of August 2011, 19% of American voters identify themselves as liberals, 38% as moderates and 41% as conservatives. In 1992, 18% identified as liberal, 40% as moderate and 35% as conservative.^[17] Turnout, however, fluctuates. Liberals comprised 20% of the voters in 2006,^[18] 22% in 2008,^[19] 20% in 2010,^[20] and 25% in 2012, which was the highest rate in decades. ^[21][22]
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Words change; at all events usages do. Perhaps the Kennedy quote explains why he came unstuck.

 

Liberal Democracy
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The Free Republic.... makes the point that liberal democracy has been taken over by the New Corruption, which advances the interests of Third World incomers at the expense of honest folk. Liberal democracy is not and never has been Democracy. That was invented by the Greeks who then gave up on it. The Swiss come about as near to it as anyone since. Another view is at Liberal Democracy - the Wiki explains
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Read for yourself. Think for yourself. Decide for yourself.

 

Liberal Democracy is a Contradiction     says  #William S. Lind     
The November 2 New York Times carried an article titled “What is Pulling Liberal Democracy Apart?”  The article itself was the usual drivel, but the title stuck with me.  The Establishment really does not understand why its definition of “liberal democracy” is failing. Yet the answer is obvious: “liberal” now contradicts “democracy”.

This was not always true.  When “liberal” retained its historic meaning as broad-minded, generous, and tolerant, desirous of a free market both in economics and in ideas, it was at least compatible with democracy, although there were tensions.  As a look at classical Athens quickly shows, democracy often went in distinctly illiberal directions.  Cleon was a product of democracy, just as much as Pericles, and it was not a monarch who ordered Socrates to drink the hemlock.  Nonetheless, in America and Britain, from the mid-19th century onward the old liberalism and democracy got along reasonably well.

Why is that no longer the case?  Why, in country after country, does the Left find democracy leading to governments (Trump, Orban, Putin) and measures (Brexit, keeping out migrants) liberals abhor?  Because the old liberalism is dead.  It died in the 1960s when the New Left took its arguments to the extreme, turned them against the old-line liberals and destroyed them morally by pointing out their contradictions.  I watched that happen at Dartmouth College in the late 1960s when I was a student there.  All the liberals who ran the college could do when the SDS threw their own arguments (always qualified, in the liberals’ minds, by common sense) back in their faces was to stammer and yield.

Herbert Marcuse provided the intellectual foundations of the New Left by feeding them the Frankfurt School's  Cultural Marxism, carefully pureed into baby food.  Cultural Marxism became the ideology of the Boomer generation, and it remains today that generation’s definition of liberalism.  It is, in the old sense of the word, thoroughly illiberal: intolerant, ungenerous, narrow-minded, loathing free markets of all kinds, especially a free market in ideas.  Just look at any campus where cultural Marxism rules, which seems to be most of them.  Anyone who dares question feminism, “gay rights”, “equality” in any of its manifestations, is soon in serious trouble.  All must bow and scrape before the “general line of the Party”.

That “liberalism”, liberalism re-defined as cultural Marxism, is inherently contradictory to democracy.  Why?  Because normal people reject the swill.  Ordinary Whites don’t apologize for being White or regard themselves as “oppressors”.  Reasonable men and women recognize the sexes are not interchangeable.  While most people are willing to tolerate homosexuality, they reject a demand to approve of it, and they think discretion is the tribute vice of all sorts should pay to virtue.

The cultural Marxists have sought to deal with a widespread and growing democratic rejection of their ideology by subverting democracy.  They have done so by trying to keep any alternatives to themselves off the ballots.  For a long while, both here and in Europe, they succeeded.

But that trick has run its course.  People now see through “conservatism” such as that of too many Republicans here, the Conservative Party in Britain, the CDU in Germany and so on.  A “conservatism” that will not fight cultural Marxism, as those parties will not, is no conservatism at all.  So real conservative candidates and parties, candidates and parties that reject the whole Establishment and its ideology, are now getting on ballots and, where they do so, winning elections.  When ordinary people are not allowed a truly democratic choice, they vote against today’s liberalism and for their historic faith, culture, and race.  What a surprise!

And so the Left is now caught in a contradiction of its own making, a contradiction between its ideology of cultural Marxism, labelled “liberalism” or “progressivism”, and its promotion of democracy.  It can have one or the other, but not both.  At present, it cannot choose.  Eventually it will, and its choice will be to extinguish democracy and forbid people to vote for anything but more cultural Marxism.  If we get to that point it will mean war.

You can safely bet this was not the analysis the New York Times provided its readers on what is pulling liberal democracy apart.

 

William S. Lind ex Wiki     
William S. Lind (born July 9, 1947) is an American conservative author. He is the author of several books and one of the first proponents of fourth-generation warfare (4GW) theory. Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation.^[1] He used the pseudonym Thomas Hobbes in a column for The American Conservative.^[2][3]

 

Fourth-Generation Warfare ex Wiki      
Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) is conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians.

The term was first used in 1989 by a team of United States analysts, including paleoconservative William S. Lind, to describe warfare's return to a decentralized form. In terms of generational modern warfare, the fourth generation signifies the nation states' loss of their near-monopoly on combat forces, returning to modes of conflict common in pre-modern times.

The simplest definition includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent non-state actor. Classical examples of this type of conflict, such as the slave uprising under Spartacus, predate the modern concept of warfare.............

[ It includes ]

Highly sophisticated psychological warfare and propaganda, especially through media manipulation, internet trolls, bots and lawfare

All available pressures are used – political, economic, social and military

Occurs in low intensity conflict, involving actors from all networks