"Liberal" respectable again

Now can we have the term "liberal" back from its abusers? A president has been elected who was said to be a thorough-going liberal and this is something that he did not deny. Why should he? The term has a number of honorable meanings, including at least one – the classical liberal free market champion – that so-called conservatives in the Republican Party – can repudiate only on pain of self-contradiction. The President Elect is not in that position. He would be more inclined to make himself out to be a New Deal liberal, that is to say, someone in favor of intervention by government policy when the market is not delivering good results. Most Republicans, Democrats, and Independents are currently liberals in that sense, though no doubt Republican readiness to intervene, strong enough when the issue is help to bankers, tends to run out (as the President Elect’s does not) when it comes to Social Security and health care. What the U. S. Federal government has done since the New Deal about both these things is very popular, and what it might do further about health care seems to have such broad support that it is hardly sensible to condemn people as "liberals" in these connections. Moreover, people who are liberals in these connections may be expected to favor relief from home foreclosures. Is this softheaded and sentimental? With some cautions about not encouraging reckless borrowing and acting within reasonable cautious limits regarding funding, it would not seem to betray a character flaw to approve of it. So, wondering how "liberal" ever became a term of abuse, it could be recovered as a term for policies hard to oppose in any straightforward way. It may claim a place beside "progressive," which has not yet been made a term of abuse, perhaps because it is much harder to imagine people ready to admit that their opinions are not progressive.