> "Liberal" as used in America usually means leftist. The original meaning of the word is largely forgotten.

"Liberal/conservative" and "left/right" both, in their original political definitions, describe essentially the same divide (the former comes from England, the latter from revolutionary France.)

They've diverged in modern usage somewhat because debate over the desirability of the movement of the locus of government power from personal prerogative of hereditary elites based on class right to the public at large based on individual rights is no longer the primary meaningful divide in the developed world, and rather debate over the precise nature of individual rights and the manner in which they should shape governance, most of which fits within the original liberal/left space (and the rest outside the classic right/left or liberal/conservative divide), is now current.