Can you tell me what liberalism is, then? Because to me it’s always meant “left wing on cultural issues.”
Asking a Lemmygrad user to explain something political won’t work out well
in most of the world, “leftist” implies that you are anti-capitalist, while “liberal” implies that you support capitalism. Leftists believe workers should control production, while liberals believe owners should control production. Liberals might be “left wing on cultural issues” but it’s a lot less consistent among liberals than among leftists. You can find, for example, a large number of anti-trans liberals, but you’ll have a harder time finding anti-trans leftists.
That still doesn’t tell me what a liberal is. How do you define liberal? At best, what I’m getting from that is “a liberal is someone who supports capitalism,” but that makes Donald Trump a liberal.
in America, “liberal” also usually implies “left-wing on cultural issues,” which excludes Trump — but like I said American liberals are a large group and aren’t always consistent on cultural issues. I’m also necessarily being kinda reductionist because political labels are pretty messy and hard to pin down. I chose to reduce it in a way that highlights the main disagreement between leftists and American liberals because I think that’s the most clarifying.