The totalitarian and authoritarian left gradually misappropriated the label liberal. Originally, it applied to the thinking of men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, i.e., minimal government, maximized personal liberty, under law, i.e., you were free to do what you wanted to do, till you wrongfully harmed another, and a regular citizen rarely if ever had any direct contact with government, so long as he never wrongfully harmed another.
Today, we'd call that either traditional conservatism or moderate libertarianism, since the label "liberalism" has come to mean the precise opposite of what it used to mean.
