What's the difference between a "liberal" and a "leftist," if there is one...

[coalition_unwilling]

30. Everyone on the left-hand side of the liberal-conservative spectrum believes

there is and should be a role for the government in managing the ecoonomy and intervening in it. Liberals tend to accept the virtues of capitalism (private ownership of the means of production) while also insisting to varying degrees upon governmental management of same. Those further to the left may believe that capitalism needs to be replaced by a different economic system, like socialism (public ownership of the means of production). Both liberals and their leftist brethren and sisters believe the government should be involved in the runnning of the economy but tend to disagree on the extent of the government's role.

I think you are conflating 'liberal' with 'libertarian' somewhat when you way that 'liberals are much more about freedom than any of the others.' What Socialist_n_TN wrote upthread is salient here, though. A liberal will almost always choose fascist when forced to choose between fascist and socialist, because a liberal's core values center around private ownership of the means of production (same as fascists').

At the risk of triggering Godwin's Law, the end of Weimar illustrates this point nicely, as the liberal, centrist and moderately conservative parties all went along with Hitler's smashing of labor and the socialists and communists, rather than build alliances with socialists and communists to stop Hitler.