Oh, but do how I agree with you! To be called a “liberal” was once a great honor. A classical liberal was open to new ideas, and would vigorously defend the right of people to express opposing views.
Today’s fascist left has ruined the word “liberal”. Just as they have ruined the word “progressive”.
Liberal meant different things in different places. On the continent, in the 19th century, it came with connotations that would not seem liberal in a US context.
And the model and source for this was largely France.
1. It meant a centralized bureaucratic government with near unlimited powers over local communities, as a development of older French dirigisme.
2. It meant cultural and linguistic unity enforced by the central government through its implementation of public education and media laws in some cases. All the local variations, dialects and languages had to go. France, in many ways, was not really “French” until the late 19th century. And so also across much of Europe. This caused a great deal of fallout, much of which is still politically significant.
3. It meant anticlericalism, or rather anti-Catholic fanaticism, as the church was largely in opposition to the centralizing, totalitarian nature of the liberal state. This led to the state becoming explicitly anti-religion, or anti-Catholic, in France if course, but also Italy, Germany, etc. This anticlericalism was, for instance, the deep background of the Dreyfus affair.