Actually, you probably couldn't be more wrong.
In the late 1800s, there was a split in the classical liberalism movement. The US moved to a social liberalism. Whereas classical liberalism advocated for small government, the current neo-liberalism of the US believes in increased government involvement.
"Core beliefs of classical liberals included new ideas—which departed from both the older conservative idea of society as a family and from later sociological concept of society as complex set of social networks—that individuals were "egoistic, coldly calculating, essentially inert and atomistic"[11] and that society was no more than the sum of its individual members.[12]"
Drawing on selected ideas of Adam Smith, classical liberals believed that all individuals are able to equally freely pursue their own economic self-interest, without government direction, serving the common good.[15] They were critical of welfare state[16] as interfering in a free market. They criticized labour's group rights being pursued at the expense of individual rights,[17] while they accepted big corporations' rights being pursued at the expense of inequality of bargaining power noted by Adam Smith:[18]
Classical liberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clearly, you can see that this is the antithesis of current 'liberalism'. Conversely ....
Social liberalism is the belief that the right to freedom from coercion should include a societal foundation. Social liberalism seeks to balance individual liberty and social justice. Like classical liberalism, it endorses a market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights and liberties, but differs in that it believes the legitimate role of the government includes addressing economic and social issues such as poverty, health care and education.[1][2][3] Under social liberalism, the good of the community is viewed as harmonious with the freedom of the individual.[4] Social liberal policies have been widely adopted in much of the capitalist world, particularly following World War II.[5]
The welfare state grew gradually and unevenly from the late nineteenth century, but became fully developed following the Second World War, along with the mixed market economy. Also called "embedded liberalism", social liberal policies gained broad support across the political spectrum, because they reduced the disruptive and polarizing tendencies in society, without challenging the capitalist economic system. Business accepted social liberalism in the face of widespread dissatisfaction with the boom and bust cycle of the earlier economic system as it seemed to them to be a lesser evil than more left-wing modes of government. Social liberalism was characterized by cooperation between big business, government and labor unions. Government was able to assume a strong role because its power had been strengthened by the wartime economy. However, the extent to which this occurred varied considerably among Western democracies
Social liberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The main problem we have today is that social liberalism has evolved into attempting to overtake the capitalist economic system, as well as restrict individual rights. Simply, it is an idea run amok.
