Fascist is more accurate.
Jefferson, Adams and Washington were “liberals”...champions of liberty.
The current leftist party is best described as “Socio-communists”.
Fascist?
Meh...the first step toward communism.
I never use the term “liberal,” either in my writing or casual conversation. My preferred words are “leftist” or “statist.”
I’ll spare you the long explanation but most “conservatives” today are what historically would be called “liberals.” Economist Murray Rothbard wrote a superb essay on this point, which I think would be easy to find on the Mises Institute site.
Today, you see the term “classical liberal” used from time to time.
Think John Locke, Montesqieu, Adam Smith. In our time, think of the Austrian school economists like Mises, Rothbard, and Friedrich von Hayek.
They really are neo-feudalists.