A lot of leftists (and I hardly ever saw it before coming on Lemmy) use 'Liberal' to mean Classic or Neo Liberal - basically a synonym of capitalist.. That's not at all what it means in American politics, where it means the opposite of Conservative. If we used that definition, Conservatives would be called Liberals as well as Liberals being Liberals, which obviously makes no sense for US lingo. However, they both are Liberals in the neo/classic sense as most US Liberals aren't calling for communism.