Liberal = Left?

[David Bergdahl]

Remember how after the fall of the Berlin Wall, suddenly, the communists
were seen as "conservative" and the free-marketeers "progressive," reversing
historical norms?  At the time I was told that left was future-oriented and
right past-oriented so the labels were fairly used.  I doubted it, arguing
that "left" was used for "my favorite position" by journalists.

If the <snips> quoted here are to be trusted, however, it's not entirely
clear that in the context center-left governments being replaced by liberal
ones is an example of liberal = left.   Even in England, liberals were
free-traders in the 19th-century; thus a liberal replacing a social-democrat
is a move to the right, since liberal parties in Europe are typically
center-right.  A left to right continuum would be:

Communists *    Socialists    *    Social-Democrats     *    Labor      *
Liberals    *    Christian-Democrats    *    Monarchists

Europeans typically say American parties are neither right nor left but
variants on a center party, the Republicans more liberal (in the European
sense) and the Democrats more labor/social-democratic.
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"Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht"
--Albert Einstein