2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Steve Leser for VP! [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)characterized by an openness to different people and different ideas. Not intolerance and hostility toward everyone who disagrees with them -- or disappoints by not being extreme enough, like Obama. If you see someone's who's been beaten literally almost to death by a mob and says he doesn't hate them because he understood something of what was behind their behavior, you know that's a liberal.
I've noticed that on the right extremist conservatives can seem like more moderate conservatives taken to extreme versions, like a moderate's dislike of their neighborhood changing to the vicious hatred of right-wing extremists, but that isn't the case on the left. Extremists always seem to lose most of what makes liberals liberal, if they ever had it. Many who think they are liberals may just be confused by a preference for left-wing types of government, not personality.