You mean Progressive, not Liberalism.  Liberalism is actually synonymous with Libertarian views.  Democrats in the 60's were accused of being Liberals, but it was a miss use of the word by Republicans.

Progressives, both Republican and Democrat, have always been...well...progressive.  Doing things that caitor to the needs of US citizens.  Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Richard M. Nixon were progressives within the Republican Party.  Nothing on the scale of Lydon Johnson or Franklyn D. Roosevelt, but they'd have a harder time finding a place in today's Republican Party than Susan Snowe.

I meant liberal when I said liberal.  What I did NOT state, which would of probably add more clarity, is Progressive, which is individuals who favor the use of more government to advance liberal causes.

I also meant to add in my last post the curious case of Ron Paul and how a number of Liberals worked on his campaign.  They supported Paul's reduction of government in areas that saw them getting more personal liberty, like the end of the drug war and so on.  

Size of government, and its function, is a measure of people's agendas and the belief in how much use of government will advance their causes.  

There is a great Reagan quote about this. "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism".

In that way, you can see that even as late as the 1980's the underlying foundation of the Republican (Conservative) Party was still very much rooted in Libertarianism. The criticism levied against "conservatives" nowadays is of course the result of the Congress and the President between 2000-2008. During those years, Conservatives became the War Party, the tax-and-spend party, etc. Bush wanting to give everyone a house, "faith-based initiatives", and so forth. If you go back though, it really wasn't all that long ago that being conservative actually meant limited government and very Libertarian-like ideas.   Sort of the Robert Taft-era of conservatism has unfortunately been lost to the times.

They're still there, they're just being suffocated out by the big-government conservatives like Rick Santorum and others like him. The ones that say they're "very conservative" but they believe in more government laws and regulations to force their values on other people. Those types of conservatives are the very opposite of what a real conservative is, and frankly they make us look bad.

Conservatism and Liberalism are purely context-based terms. Really, liberalism should properly be called radicalism, compared to conservatism, its just that change has so long been married to the notion of freedoms that the two are largely inseparable.

What I am contending here is that core values that make liberal liberal and conservative conservative is pretty consistent.  The means may change though, along with opinions of government.  Only reason where i can see conservative being what it is now, is that the past would of seen less government, and the left ended up going statist through Communism, and secular powers and the user of government to affect change.  Standing in opposition to that ended up naturally being opposed to government.  But, go back to the era prior to when Classic Liberal came in, and I believe you see conservative being VERY statist.  Hobbes, for example, is conservative, and he argues for the state.

No, Liberal is a label used by Republicans on Democrats who were/are socialists, because those socialists at the time (the 1960's) were for more government social programs, free love, and open drug use.   True Liberals, however are for truly small, limited government and against government intrusion into private lives.

Progressives are socially progressive in their views, they can be fiscally progressive, moderate, or conservative.  The common theme, however, is that they believe government can benefit people by solving problems.

People aren't necessarily Conservative or Progressive.  They can be fiscally conservative yet socially progressive, or fiscally progressive yet socially conservative.  It's by no means cut or dry, which is the problem with today's politics.  Too many people, especially those on the right but not limited to them, think you must hold exactly the same views in order to be a Conservative.  Otherwise you're liberal. 

If you don't believe me, there was an episode of FrontLine back during the Bush administration that discussed how Bush won the election in 2000 with the aid of Christian conservatives.  One of the evangelical ministers that supported Bush put it succinctly when he said if you don't believe in what I believe, then you're not a conservative.  Which oddly enough put him in direct conflict with another minister who was also a Bush supporter but held far less conservative views.

It's a world view that becomes narrower and narrower based on who applies it.  If eventually everyone on the right believes it's only what they believe that is conservative or not, eventually there will only be one true conservative.

You said Republican. I said conservative.

Republicans = Democrat light. They dont stand for anything anymore, not conservatism or anything, its whichever wind direction is blowing now. Republican should not even be in the same sentence as conservatism.

But im no statist and want to be left alone by the governemnt, they are screwing up everything and costing me alot of money.

I am going with actually definitions, and not how words are used in a derogatory manner.  I know that "liberal" is thrown around as a slur to deride certain individuals and undermine argument.  But that isn't what it means.  You did touch on some of it, and yes you can argue "Progressive'' is a better term to use for people who are more pro-government.  These people, as a rule, will generally be liberal in what they promote though:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/progressive

If it involves enacting proactive change.  There are social conservatives who do also want to use government to end up getting involved with people's lives and outlaw things.  But I did place Progressive under the liberal wing of politics because that is what fits best, despite turning "liberal" into a slur.

These American politicians don't seem to know what they believe, just show them the money and they will believe what you want. That's what it seems like anyway