The big lie/change/spin/bias...
Originally liberals were social conservatives who advocated growth and progess mostly technological(knowledge being absolute/unchanging)based on law--reality...the nature of man/govt. does not change.
Atheist secular materialists through evolution removed the foundations...made the absolutes relative and call all technology evolution(science) to substantiate their efforts--claims...social engineering--PC!
Liberals/Evolution BELIEVE they are the conservatives too!
What's left?
The long and the short of it is that there have always been some liberals who wanted the Federal government to be more larger and some liberals who wanted the Federal government to be smaller. And there have always been some conservatives who wanted the Federal government to be more larger and some conservatives who wanted the Federal government to be smaller. It usually depends upon the specific issue. For example, in the area of health care (an area discussed in this article), Medicare and national health care plans are ordinarily thought of as "liberal" ideas. Conservative Republicans typically oppose such programs on the ground that "one size fits all" Federal programs are inappropriate and that the states should be allowed to experiment on their own. However, when the specific issue concerns litigation in the health care arena, it is the liberal Democrats who want to allow each state to make their own laws and it is the conservative Republicans who insist on a "one size fits all" Federal rule.
None of this is really a liberal vs. conservative issue. Each side just chooses which government they want to make the rules after they make a judgment about what rules each of the governments would implement.