It's absolutely not just word games.
You're right that it's not easy to map German politics of the time onto ours, but why is it done then? It's because the left is trying its best to draw parallels between the European Right and classical American liberalism on the basis of some flimsy pretext of being "pro-business".
Which is as mendacious as it is asinine.
BOTH European left and right are virulently statist philosophies. Even the European "center" can be described as just moderate statism. What we call American "conservatism" or "classical liberalism" doesn't even fit into the European left-right framework....it is completely off that scale.
If we were smart we wouldn't adopt the enemy's idiotic language and call ourselves a "rightist" movement at all. And I think we absolutely need to point out that whether it's the left boot on your neck or the right one doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the end.
On a topical note: Thatcher was anti-State.
She spent her life trying to reduce the power of Government and the dependance of 1970’s Britain upon the State.
Which is the same as saying: she was an authentic Conservative.
For if Conservatism means anything at all, its meaning includes the reduction of Government and State power back to its proper levels. For Freedom and the rule of law absolutely rely on the constraint of Government.
In so far as the European right is (indeed) statist, it is not Conservative. But we don’t have to go to Europe to see so-called Right-wingers who are indistinguishable from the Left. In the US we call them RINOs.
Moral chameleons attach themselves to the right as easily as to the left, as Thatcher (and Reagan) knew only too well. That doesn’t make the definition of Conservatism different - it just means that we have to be very clear about what we believe in and how we label it.
Hope this was helpful.
Yes, the other side lies freely and without consequence, but I don’t really see why that obligates us to do so as well.
I agree with everything else you’ve written. The extreme conditions in intra-war Europe, in an age of absolutist Ideologies, meant that “Liberalism” (in the good, European sense of the word) practically disappeared from the landscape altogether.
There ARE some Liberal aspects to European policy thinking at the moment, but - totally unrecognized by the British and American press - they mostly emanate from Brussels. .. Believe It, Or Not!