Befoer I start here, I just want to make one observation: Liberal is actually pretty moderate in most things. Greens and Socialists, for instance, are not Libs. American politics really has no home for the far, far left, and hasn't since the mid-70s outside of such places as Cambridge, MA or Berkeley, CA. Contrary to what the Cons would like people to believe, these communities really don't have much if any influence on American politics.
As an Anarcho-Socialist, I know precisely how thinly spread the far left is here. Liberals are most definitely Capitalists, albeit somewhat moderate Capitalists.
As a counterpoint and complement to my other thread, what does "liberal" mean to you?
We all know these types:
Save the whales before the people: I think humans are an alien growth that will kill the earth if it isn't stopped. Climate change shows us this is correct, even though we don't yet know whether the changes we see are in fact the result of human activity. Yes, the plight of one purple-headed woodpecker is much more important than the whole logging industry.
As I wrote above, Greens aren't Libs, as the type of hard-left Greens you describe aren't really very Capitalistic. Also, there is a difference between being considered careful guardians of nature and having an instinctual loathing for one's fellow human beings. Misanthropy and pessimism about man's innate goodness is actually one of the conservative traits I admire most. More on that below.
I'd also like to mention that London's Conservative mayor is very green, even by Lefty American standards.
Personally, I'm doubious about this whole "we can't afford to be environmentally responsible" argument. It's a question of priority.
Now, there are the PETA types, and they are much more like what you describe, as is Greenpeace. But these people really live at the margins of American politics, because anyone who puts the rights and dignity of animals ahead of humans is not going to be very popular here.
And whether or not the actions to protect such species as Piping Plovers and Spotted Owls have crippled industry or merely inconvenienced them remains to be seen. I think that if we'd been better conservators of nature in the 20th century, we wouldn't be having such "showdowns" now.
Secular humanists: I want "In God We Trust" taken off our money. I want to keep prayer out of classrooms and out of political and legal situations. I want people to put their hands on a copy of the Constitution, not the Bible, when they're sworn in. There are plenty of religions out there, and plenty of ways to live without religion. It just doesn't need to be in public discourse.
I know as many conservative Libertairan Atheists as I do Secular Humanist Atheists. I really think this one's just not appropriatly put the the lefty column at all.
But there is a push-back on TheoCons who want to intrude into our bedrooms, and this comes mostly from gay and lesbian lefties and Libs. We are the ones most likely to feel persecuted by them (with good reason). If anything, this brings out the straight Libertarians, who, again, fall into the right-hand side of the spectrum on most issues.
As to school prayer: I remember reciting the Lord's prayer before class in very-early elementary school, and I remember being confused, because they left out the whole last bit about "the kingdom, and the power for ever and ever". Episcopals will know what I mean, as will Catholics. I can't even imagine what any Jewish kids might have thought, especially in light of that commandment about taking gods before Yahweh.
Frankly, inclusive multiculturalism is not such a terrible thing: the flip-side is a conformity to a norm that may not be altogether universal.
Thinking liberal: I know what I believe and why I believe it. I can defend my belief system against fairly strong attack, and I can even make some attackers concede that some of my points are valid and reasonable. And I can live next to people who believe 180 degrees differently from the way I believe.
There are actually very few of these guys about: tolerance for dissent is not a strong point with mainstream Libs. I'll take as an example gay conservatives (Log Cabin types): I have seen guys rail against the possibility that one can be both gay and not-a-lefty. The favorite tags are "self-loathing" and "internalized homophobia", as if it's quite impossible to be conservative and not be entirely beholden to TheoCons, who form the rump of the base.
Gun control used to be a big issue here, too. But somewhere along the way it became socially acceptable for someone of Liberal temperment to re-think their opposition to the Second Amendment. Among certain die-hards, it still matters, but most rational Liberals understand that this is a dead issue, and that the Second Amendment is obviously there for a reason. As someone who has been the victim of gun violence myself, I can sympathize, but ultimately understand that it's a total non-starter, shrug and move on. The Constitution is much too important a document to fall sway to fashion.
Also not mentioned is the "intelligensia" crowd, but I guess it can be covered in the next example.
Free speech stifling/politically correct liberal: I can't say anything that will offend anyone. More importantly, I can't let YOU say anything that will offend anyone. This is offensive? How? I don't know who Stalin is. Or was. What does history have to do with anything?
And yes, we all know people who fit these "types" as well.
I hate hate hate manipulation of language for political ends, and the easily offended give me the shudders. As someone who worked in Cambridge off and on since the late 70s, I've seen political correctness grow like a weed until it's strangled many types of dialog that could have been useful in societal evolution. It also is highly counter-productive because it gives those who disagree an easy target to ridicule and allows them to claim (with some justification) a certain level of victimization. No good comes of this, and much bad comes because it breeds resentment.
I am probably the least politically-correct person I know IRL. But I'm equally offensive to everybody. and the really funny thing is that I get more positive communication accomplished with blunt words than others can do in endless reems of PC shitspeak. I'm a big fan of George Orwell, who warned about such things back in the 40s, and an equally big fan of the ACLU, whom no one likes until they have a grievance.
But you also conflate PC with anti-knowledge, and this is not really correct. PC really is an invention of Academia, along with all this bullshit about "creating safe environments" and seeing threats where none occur. There's also a tendancy within this community to manipulate not only opportunity but outcome. This, too, creates a huge amount of resentment.
One can be both smart, learned and conservative, even if most people (both left and right) really don't want to believe it. This enables that strange tendancy toward anti-intellectualism that is very much a righ-wing concern, and allows many lefties to discount conservative intelligence as oxymoronic, which it's not.
One thing that you didn't mention specifically are the Nanny-State Liberals, most especially the prohibitionists and prudes. They are every bit as horrible as the conform-or-face-stigma "silent majority" conservatives, and every bit as hypocritical. I would love to see moralism and righteous indignation struck from all political dialog, but I'm not holding my breath. Political power depends on demonizing one group of people or other: that's one of the main reasons why I really don't care much for politics, especially when it's played as a blood sport.
Personally, I'd like to see all speed limits rescinded and all drugs and prostitution legalized, but that will never happen.
There was a re-alignment of political philosophies in the 50s and 60s in ongoing "generation gap" disputes between WW2 vets and Boomers. It's still with us, and is likely to remain so until, as someone said once in another place, people born after 1960 die off. It's poisoned the political discourse as long as I can remember, and I say good riddance to all that.
I'd love to see political parties that offer real choices to me to participate better as a voter, but they don't. So I remain an Independant and look at voting patterns and positioning in determining whom I select to represent me. I can't honestly support either party right now: they both seem to know what's better for me than I do.