people probably don't like this nitpick because the core meaning of "liberal" is relative, just like "left" and "right". "liberal"/"conservative" may have a different connotation than "left"/"right" depending on context, but they have roughly the same meaning. you always need to know (at least implicitly) what position is being compared against to know what "liberal" means.

But that's exactly what I'm arguing against! The core meaning of liberal is not relative, it's a pretty well defined ideology (with multiple strands, to be sure, but still).

The whole reason you think the meaning depends on the context is because you have been mislead to believe that liberal == left-wing, or something approaching that.

This is completely and utterly false, hence my "nitpick". Changing the meaning of these words causes the exact type of confusion you seem to be suffering from!

Left-wing is a term with a very loose definition, and depending on the Overton window, "liberal" places somewhere on the left/right axis. "Liberal", however, does have a well-defined meaning, since it refers to a specific ideology, unlike "the left".

TLRD: "liberal" is not a direction on an axis, rather it's a point on an already existing axis, the left/right one.

I'm being downvoted too lol, politics on HN are so ridiculous.

Classical liberalism is basically the opposite of liberalism as it is mostly understood in the West today.

Interestingly, you see this most in Australia, where the Centre/Right party is called the Liberal Party.

But it hasn't been used like that since the 1970s really, except in the "Liberal Democracy" sense. I think that has actually caused a lot of issues where the US right says they don't support Liberal Democracy, whereas - generally speaking, with the exception of the authoritarian arm - they mostly do.

The meaning of words change over time. Always have and always will.