I'm sorry, since when George W. Bush and Donald Trump are "Western liberals"? Western, sure - liberals, the fuck.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism :

"Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law."

Technically both major parties in the US are liberal parties, it's a "liberal democracy" where they both share a certain set of beliefs, though they may differ on the details. Only in the US is the word used as a slur by one party towards the other.

	▲	iamnothere a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Thank you, good to see someone who actually knows what the word means. Sibling comment is correct too, the term has been misused and muddied in the US since the 1930s, and it no longer has a coherent meaning here. (If you mean “Democrats” then just use that term.)
	▲	_heimdall a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		And ironically, neither party uses the word in a way that matches definition. The DNC platform isn't particularly liberal, and is moving further from it as/if the DSA gets more of a footing. The RNC complains of "the liberals" are most often complains about policies and ideas that would be more socialist (in the real Marxist sense) than liberal.
	▲	toyg 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm European, I know this very well. And still, the absolutist/dictatorial streak in Donald Trump's philosophy of government is something that XIX century liberals would simply abhor. He doesn't believe in consent (and not just "of the governed"), he doesn't believe in individual rights beyond his own... Even just his successful legal moves to obtain full immunity is the exact opposite of "equality before the law". (I also disagree that the two US parties share "a certain set of beliefs". This might have been true 15 years ago, but after the Trump takeover it's becoming increasingly difficult to see any common principles between any other party and what is effectively a satrapy.) George W. Bush's administration already showed a streak for dictatorial rule that had nothing to do with classic liberalism; Trump took that to extremes. Classic liberalism developed in opposition to absolutist monarchies, promoting rule by parliament - Bush and Trump did the exact opposite. They are not classic liberals by any stretch.