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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.
I don't think highlighting the disagreement between "leftists" and "liberals" is very clarifying here. That kind of clarification tells me "liberals are leftists except for the differences highlighted," but the differences highlighted seem to be everything that makes a leftist a leftist.
Google tells me that liberal means socially progressive (i.e. culturally left) and promoting social welfare.
How does your definition differ?
Please don't tell me it's just "they're not always progressive and don't always promote welfare." : )
My definition mentioned support for capitalism.
So a liberal is someone who supports capitalism with social welfare?
Most American conservative voters also support some form of social welfare. Something like 70% of Americans support singlepayer healthcare.
Then what's a liberal in comparison to conservatives?
There's no clear dividing line, it's a continuous spectrum. Many American liberals look center-right to non-Americans.
Alright, this is probably gonna go in an endless cycle of "Are they this?" "Well, not necessarily..." that isn't going to go anywhere. Thanks for trying, have a nice day.
I have no idea what response you were looking for, sorry
A positive definition (they are X) rather than a negative definition (they are not necessarily Y)
I gave you one. "Liberals" support capitalism, but in America specifically "liberal" also implies that they trend toward supporting more safety nets than "conservatives" and being more "left wing on cultural issues," but neither of those is consistent and it's a spectrum. The main uniting trait of "liberals" in the world is support for capitalism.
*PS I have a meeting in 5 minutes so I can't continue this