Classical Liberalism if very, very far from what the Democratic party pushes these days. In fact, I would venture a guess that most thinking people are Classical Liberals. I make the distinction about "thinking" people not to be elitists at all, but rather because it is obvious that there are those who blindly follow and then there are those who choose to be more analytical and actually think rather than follow. Problems, as Einstein famously said, cannot be solved from the state of mind that created them in the first place.
This is where, I think, Classical Liberalism fits. I happen to think it is an ideology that would do the most good and deliver the greatest benefits across the board.
In case someone reading this isn't clear on the distinction, here's a good explanation:
Originally, the political Left was a name for classical liberalism based on where the liberals sat, as opposed to the conservative monarchists, in the French National Assembly. So if we’re fetishizing the original sense of terms, the distinction is nonsense.
Most of the political spectrum in the modern West (outside of the far right, which is classically conservative) is rooted in classical liberalism, which was nearly completely victorious over classical conservatism. They differ in whether they see the progress made by the 18th century liberals as the end goal or the starting point (“Left” evolved somewhat faster than “liberal” because that division became evident during the revolutionary period in France.)
> I make the distinction about "thinking" people not to be elitists at all
Yeah, you just think disagreeing with you ideologically can only be possible if people don't think.
> but rather because it is obvious that there are those who blindly follow and then there are those who choose to be more analytical and actually think rather than follow.
Sure, that much is true. The part that's less obvious is where you say most everyone that falls in the latter camp agrees with you ideologically while most everyone who disagrees with you is in the former camp.
I'm not sure what definition of “liberal” you are using, but there are so many obvious counterexamples that don't fit any of the plausoble ones that I can't see any way that that could be even a useful rule of thumb.
Missionaries tend not to be liberals, and indeed tend to be lionized by conservatives for doing exactly the opposite of “move to an area, hunker down, shut up, and try to integrate.” Conservatives don't object to liberals because liberals proselytize more than conservatives, they object to liberals because liberals disagree with conservatives.