[aceintx]

All that really shows though is that we've succeeded in making "liberal" a dirty word.

A lot of people who consider themselves mainstream of moderately conservative are what would have been called liberal in any historical perspective.
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The word Liberal has not always been an epithet. It wasn't until McGoo...err....McCain....err...McGovern decided to call himself that and the Leftist Nutjobs picked it up that it became a negative descriptor.

The new descriptor for the Commie Libs is "Progressive. I predict that within 5 to 10 years this word will be as negatively viewed as Liberal.

and I believe the word "Moderate" is becoming synonymous with the word "Liberal". at least in my mind.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

You're right about the drift in meaning of the word "liberal" -- and probably will be right about the other terms.

The notion of a "left-right" spectrum in politics is misleading in its simplicity. Politics is not two-dimensional. In any "first-past-the-post" electoral system, successful political parties are colitions, rather than expressions of a coherent ideology. All the more so in the U.S., where there can only be one President.

Similarly, there is no one-to-one mapping of "liberal" to "Democrat", nor "conservative" to "Republican" (different names -- same principles in Canada). As the ingredients in a winning colation change over time; so too will the meanings of all the convenient labels we attach to the parties and driving ideologies.