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I'm a little surprised that Mr Lind is unaware of something that he could easily find in any good dictionary: "liberal" comes from the Latin "liberalis" meaning suitable for a freeman, or generous. Historians have stated is likely because of the second meaning that British Whigs adopted it from their Spanish counterparts who were the first to use it. It is the libertarians (who, speaking globally, can be either left or right) who can more rightly claim the root word "liber" or "libertas" for their own. Further, he neglects to mention what political scientists without an ideological axe to grind have long recognized, that there is an ambiguity in the concept of freedom, which has been summed up as being negative i.e. absence of coercion or constraint esp. by government, and positive i.e. presence of autonomy or self-direction esp. that facilitated by government. Liberalism biased to the former is right-wing, classical, conservative etc. Liberalism biased to the latter is left-wing, modern, progressive. it's important to note that re liberalism the addjectives "classical" and "modern" are applicable only in the British-North American context. I find Mr. Lind's statement that American liberals "have never had anything have never had anything philosophically in common with...post-Marxist social democrats in Europe" surprising. In fact they have a great deal in common but Lind evidently is as ignorant of the connected developments in 20th century British and North American liberalism and Continental Western European socialism as many if not most U.S. political scholars or he would know that the 20th century witnessed the dialectical synthesis of the classical liberalism and classical socialism of those regions into modern liberalism and the modern, moderate form of democratic socialism now called social democracy, distinguished by degrees, emphases, and pedigree but nothing fundamental. For this reason U.S. liberals would be considered social democrats in Europe. Elsewhere "liberal" unless it has an adjective like "progressive" or "social" (not in the limited civil liberties sense) is economically decidedly on the right. While I don't object to the noun "progressive" since it can be used by either liberals or democratic socialists (and as an adjective even by conservatives), I would agree that it would clarify things for liberals to call themselves liberals again, but clarity, unfortunately, is not what political language has ever been primarily concerned with. Didn't Lind used to refer to his own position, first in his "Up from Conservatism" (1996), as "national liberalism", socially conservative but economically progressive or as he said liberal? Up here in Canada we'd call him a red tory or lower case progressive consevative.
