The current American meaning of the word 'liberal' is different from the current European meaning of the word 'liberal' is different from the 19th century European meaning of the word.
I'm not sure I entirely see the differences as you describe them. To a certain degree, the folk usage of these terms have some differences and these differences are a consequence of other ideologies at work that results in a purposeful perversion of the term.
And liberalism isn't a single ideology, but a grouping of many ideologies -- even just taking the European definition of the term (with which I am more familiar), any term that encompasses John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, William Beveridge, Cyril Smith, Karl Popper, the Liberator Collective and Isiah Berlin has to be a fairly broad, rather than narrow, term. All those people have shared principles, and shared ideological roots, but they were expressed pragmatically in *very* different ways.
I agree.
And all ideologies change. There is, for example, no Christian church I know of whose beliefs now are identical to the beliefs of the same church a century ago -- their core values may be the same, but their emphasis, and small points of nuance, adapt to a changing world. The same goes for environmentalism (thirty years ago environmentalists would have called for an end to nuclear power, now most see it as a better option than fossil fuels), socialism, conservatism, libertarianism or whatever. They all start from a set of principles and beliefs, but the consequences of those principles change as the world changes (or the ideology disappears altogether).
Again, I don't see the ideologies adapting -- mostly because they can't. I see in some of those cases, one ideology coming into conflict with another/other ideology(ies). Yes, people change and people change their views but worldviews are not people.
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