I meant 'liberal' in its Hobbesian sense. The word was hijacked by guys like Kenneth Galbraith to mean something else entirely. When you hear the word 'liberal' applied to an American politician nowadays, it means left-leaning/socialist; this has not always been so.
I'm well aware of that and I am using it in the European sense - my assertion remains and history proves liberal democracy always leads to socialism.
Human nature is such it can do nothing else, for the poor will always outnumber the rich. Take a look at Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed . An excerpt on point:
In particular, democracy is seen as promoting an increase in the social rate of time preference (present-orientation) or the "infantilization" of society. It results in continually increased taxes, paper money and paper money inflation, an unending flood of legislation, and a steadily growing "public" debt. By the same token, democracy leads to lower savings, increased legal uncertainty, moral relativism, lawlessness, and crime. Further, democracy is a tool for wealth and income confiscation and redistribution. It involves the legislative "taking" of the property of some – the haves of something – and the "giving" of it to others – the have-nots of things. And since it is presumably something valuable that is being redistributed – of which the haves have too much and the have-nots too little – any such redistribution implies that the incentive to be of value or produce something valuable is systematically reduced. In other words, the proportion of not-so-good people and not-so-good personal traits, habits, and forms of conduct and appearance will increase, and life in society will become increasingly unpleasant.
Democracy of any type only assures the most opportunistic, ruthless and skilled demogogues will ever be elected to high office as Hoppe illustrates in Why Bad Men Rule . The West will never throw off the yoke of socialism until the give up the idol of democracy.