The problem with liberalism: It has no limiting principles.
At its core, liberalism is an incoherent, value-free ad hoc ideology that doesn't promulgate any enduring ideas that stand the test of time. It has no underlying moral foundation to support its ideas other than pilfering those rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics and is parasitical of its foundations and morality. Liberalism is relativistic in that it is constantly contradicting itself based on phony compassion, its pretense of virtue, and its constant search for identity.
Everything liberals and liberalism stands for masks its real objective of seeking and maintaining political power. It is a con and a deception, where millions have fallen for its contrived and manufactured objectives based on accepting it at face value.
Why can't these same accusations be made against conservatism? Because conservatism has consistently held to the same principles going all the way back to Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, who stressed that it is tradition and obligation that are the most important principles that lead to a just and stable society.
Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley are considered the fathers of modern conservatism. They put forth primarily the principles of smaller government, lower taxes, individual accountability, and prudence, among others (in opposition to the collectivist welfare state).
These principles haven't change in over fifty years, and you can actually go back farther to Franklin Roosevelt's administration, where there was significant opposition from the right to the unprecedented expansion of the federal government through his New Deal programs.
Ever since, it's been a contest between the limiting principles from the right versus the left's insatiable desire to expand the size and scope of the government as well as the allowance for unlimited and unrestrained individual behavior.
There's an old saying that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." This is the essence of liberalism. It's these "good intentions" that create more problems than they solve. Liberals live on their perpetual virtue-signaling and alleged compassion while creating problems they don't take responsibility for. They blame problems on the right and then go on to create "solutions" that end up just adding more layers of problems on top of the ones they created in the first place.
They rely on the public's historical ignorance and myopia in not grasping the roots of the original problem. A lack of limiting principles allowed Lyndon Johnson to put the administrative state, that began with FDR, on steroids with the implementation of his Great Society programs that, in turn, gave us the modern American welfare state. It is a monster that has been devouring the country ever since.
Along came the social upheavals of the sixties that gave birth to modern liberalism and today's far-left Democratic Party. Out of this era came a new morality that, like liberal politics, washed away the limiting principles of acceptable social behavior and mainstreamed taboos such as divorce, drug use, and obligation-free sex. This has, in turn, led to the normalization of abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, new-ageism and pseudo-spirituality, legal marijuana, and euthanasia, just to name a few.
Liberalism will scream to the end of time that it is not an ideology rooted in "slippery solipsism," but that's exactly what it is. So it bears repeating: there are no limiting principles to liberalism, whereas authentic conservatism has been trying to put the brakes on it by promoting tradition, virtue, order, and stability.
Can anyone who is either a liberal or a Democrat or both make the same claim? If so, he is being intellectually dishonest, because liberals' track record proves otherwise. Without societal limits and restraints on personal behavior, the natural forces of man will surface in the form of chaos and nihilism. And removing limitations on a central government will always lead to totalitarianism. These are the logical conclusions of liberalism.