Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross and Levitt, all opposed Rawls, and called themselves "liberals".
Hopefully vowelless won't take offense, because that's probably just a side-effect of how overloaded (and thus meaningless) words like "liberal" and "conservative" and "right" and "left" are in modern American politics. Modern "liberals" are more properly "progressives" (or something), the actual liberals are mostly people who call themselves "libertarian" and "conservatives" are split between the uneducated redneck snake handling fundamentalist types, and the more educated, "fiscally conservative, small government" types. And I'm sure somebody will shoot all sorts of holes in what I just said, which just furthers my point. It's hard to talk about any of this stuff, because we don't have a consistent lingo.
I conflated conservatism with libertarianism and liberalism with progressivism.
When Bernie Sanders won his mayoral election many years ago, the town council thought he was going to institute a Marxist-Leninist state. They were shocked when he streamlined budgets. (I'm not a Bernie supporter; it's just an anecdote I recently heard on the radio.)
Many consider San Francisco to be one of the most "liberal", "progressive" cities in the United States. But during the California fiscal crisis recently, at the depths of the national recession, San Francisco was the only major city in the state (IIRC) that kept a balanced budget the whole time. They did that by relying on savings (the city keeps billions stashed away for emergencies), and by rapidly instituting furloughs and budget cuts. This wasn't by fiat--all components of government, as well as the special interests, were on board. LA and other major cities couldn't accomplish that. And that's ignoring the rest of the country. Similarly, when Democrats obtained a super-majority in California, capable of overriding Republican tax and budget filibustering, they didn't open the flood gates of taxes and spending.
The only politicians in recent memory who flat-out stated that they didn't care about fiscal conservatism was Dick Cheney and a substantial minority of similarly-minded politicians and pundits, almost all dedicated Republicans. To quote Dick Cheney, "deficits don't matter".
Ignoring social issues, the divide in America isn't about fiscal conservatism and small government versus a gargantuan state. The conflict is over emphasis (social services vs military and police), and small percentage point changes in the taxation rate.
True.
> The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism".
No, they didn't. For quite some time, the American left [0] (called "liberal" dominantly for some decades, some adopted the moniker "progressive" when it was perceived that the right had created bad associations with "liberal" a few decades ago, but with very little in common, in terms of ideas, with the older progressive movement, either in terms of substantive ideology, policy preference, or contemporary relative left-right position), right (usually called "conservative"), and libertarian political camps have all been dominated by, or at least significantly shaped by, ideas that trace back, in different ways, to 18th century liberalism and its struggles against 18th century conservatives. And all three have adherents who claim that their group is the proper heir to classical liberalism.
[0] relatively speaking, before anyone makes the common argument that by international standards, the US has virtually no left, with the major parties ranging from center-right (Democrats) to far right (Republicans).
This is not supported by history in any way. This wikipedia article [1] is a good place to start. There are other explanations on Quora [2] [3]. These are not primary sources, but they have the relevant references.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_State...
[2] https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-term-liberalism-come-to-d...
[3] https://www.quora.com/How-did-it-come-to-be-that-in-the-USA-...