In most of the world, "liberal" doesn't mean the left half of the political spectrum. In many places it's the centerish part and in a few places it's the rightish part. In the US, until recently, almost all mainstream politicians were liberal in this sense (even while many of the Republican liberals used "liberal" as an epithet in campaign ads).

From wikipedia:

> Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law.[1][2] Liberals espouse various and sometimes conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.[3] Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history

In this case I was referring to economic liberalism, the believe in private property, free markets, etc., not what Americans believe it means. This includes democrats and republicans [1], they are both economically liberal. I forgot Americans are under the impression that liberal means left-wing / democrat or something. The differences you point out are within this ideology, so like which industry do and don't we subsidize and regulate, etc. it has less meaning for people who aren't liberals.

[1] see the overlap between the economic policies of Reagan and Bill Clinton

I don't recall the exact language but it was rather flame-war-esque in a comment full of otherwise benign discourse. The issue isn't liberals or conservatives being mentioned. In what way do you think I broke the rules? That it wasn't a substantive comment on its own? I didn't feel the pull to silently flag and hoped for GP to elaborate.