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You can call a rose a cabbage but if you attempt to eat it it will not taste like a cabbage but will continue to be a rose.
So too you can call a Liberal (or a 'progressive' or 'Lefty' or a 'radical'-meaning Left-wing radical) "soft on crime" or "weak on foreign policy" but a true Liberal--or lefty etc.-- will still pursue the just cause over expediency; will not be a scaremonger and use crime as a means to an end (e.g, getting elected), or sacrifice the human rights of a felon or murder innocent civilians in foreign countries by appealing to people's base instincts so they accept the unacceptable: the death penalty for the former and an illegal invasion in the case of the latter. They will continue acting as a Liberal( or as a Lefty or progressive or human rights activist) by being against injustice; being for universal human rights; being against racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance of any kind; and being for freedom against want.
In other words, by Liberal (progressive, Lefty, activist) is meant not being Right-wing; not being for the death penalty; not being against women's rights; not endowing the foetus with personhood in order to appease one's extreme right-wing base; for single-payer universal health care; for affordable education; for freedom of speech and the right of assembly; for helping the poor, which means social democratic welfare; for equal rights; for enlightenment principles; and against barbarism.
Liberals and the Left haven't always been on the same side on everything , as they were in the 1930's and 1940's, say, but they do have this in common: they all favour justice for all, liberty, and tolerance. Each now--as in the past--are against laissez-faire, because untrammeled market relations cause suffering and evils like child labour.
Both advocate social justice, which is why they oppose pro-life zealots who believe a woman's life is worthless and have no scruple about seeing her as nothing but a breeder rather than as a human being in her own right. It's not only an injustice, but a breach of civil and human rights, to see women only as a means to an end; to sacrifice them to the state by pretending the foetus or blastocyst in the womb is a person at the same stage as a born person, when it doesn't even have synapses or is sentient at this stage of its evolution into a human being.
Obviously, I'm not talking about classical liberalism here, which has more in common with Right-wing Libertarians--the position of Wilson who was miffed when Roosevelt appropriated the Liberal moniker for himself, as the latter was pro-labour and for regulation. I'm talking about the reforms of the Progressive era (1910) when liberalism underwent a change in definition from the laissez-faire dogma of President Cleveland to the government interventionism of Roosevelt. This new liberalism is what many people identify liberalism with today. A Liberal today is generally somebody who agrees with the New Deal and would like to see a new New Deal brought into being. A liberal nowadays then is closer to the Left. They're egalitarian, which doesn't mean sacrificing individualism (it's capitalism which attacks the latter, since it requires conformity and willing helots to keep it going) and for fairness and security.
Take the name back, and make it mean fairness and justice and tolerance and freedom from want again.
