>DEMOCRAT, LIBERAL, OLD-STYLE
I'm glad to find a US liberal, they seem to be rather thin on the ground.
In the UK, the term refers to people who are fairly middle of the road. In the US, I believe it means left of centre. From my point of view, as an outsider to American politics, I was always amazed at this distinction. To me, both the Democrats and Republicans are very far to the right of the parties that can be found in Europe, let alone the UK. In the UK the "Liberal Democrats" (Lib Dems) is the name of the third largest party in the House of Commons, regarded as being in between our two main parties, except on electoral reform, where they are more strongly in favour of change than the other parties.
Here's a link to an old discussion on the subject, although I feel that both our main parties are moving further to the right these days.
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=1026
