This comment is a hot mess because you used "liberal" as the implied opposite of conservative, but that isn't the definition @Cowbee@lemmy.ml implied when talking about hexbear, or at least that isn't how he bear defines it.
I really wish we could have some better descriptive words in these communities. "Tankie" is equally meaningless and confusing.
So the common american usage is liberal = leftist (or whatever counts for leftist)
On hexbear (and elsewhere) liberal is just the centrist of the conservative capitalists. By this definition, every politician in america is a liberal, whether democrat, republican, or independent, since they are all capitalists (if any of them aren't liberal, it's because they are too small to be relevant or because they are just blatant fascists). Anyone who isn't anticapitalist is conservative by that standard.
I could be wrong in some of what I said I'm just trying to help clarify but I'm not perfect lol please don't take this as an attempt to argue
Theirs is the global, older, more universal use of the word. Using "Liberal" and "conservative" to basically exclusively refer to "democrats" and " republicans" is a modern/american thing.