Well, as you'll agree, the term "liberal" in a classical sense is extremely broad, which makes the hatred of "liberals" among the right wing in the U.S. particularly risible, since their own ideology is a version of liberalism, a fact they don't recognize because their understanding of politics is approximately as sophisticated as that of the average 1960s "New Leftist." (and yes, by that I mean "hippie")
LBJ's "Great Society" was in many respects quite different from the "New Deal"--it felt different in part because of the rhetoric behind them. It's hard to imagine the avuncular FDR declaring "WAR" on "poverty."
But their goal was the same, and astute economic and political observers recognize this: to
save capitalism at a time when its continuation as a stable system under modernity did not seem like a foregone conclusion. Let's not forget that behind the fake paranoia of McCarthyism was a very real anxiety about the very foundation of liberal-capitalist civilization. The notion of a "domino effect" in which the fall of capitalist regimes on the other side of the globe might threaten the American polity and way of life didn't seem as ridiculous then as it does now, given the events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, not to mention pretty significant parts of Asia.
When Kennedy commented that the "battle for freedom" would be staged on the "southern half of the globe," he was geographically out to lunch. But his clarification: Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East seems in his historical context to beg exactly this question: how could Liberal capitalism stake out a ground for itself in the global political culture, especially in places where massive asymmetry in the distribution of wealth was causing instability in previously friendly regimes.
So you tell me the answer: is it still left wing if the entire point of an entitlement program is to correct some kinds of asymmetry while preserving others? LBJ's vision was of a liberal capitalism that was stable in perpetuity, that didn't suffer from the massive, regime-changing upheaval that his age was witnessing around the world. FDR was the same: if he had been a communist (as some of his opponents insinuated) the New Deal would have looked like a Swedish-style universal entitlement program. Instead, it was a complex, cumbersome and heavily targeted system, with the goal of easing--not eliminating--asymmetrical wealth distribution in the U.S.
I'm partly--but not completely--being cute here, so that I can say this: the New Deal saved capitalism. The Great Society offered an extension of its influence, but did not change its basic mandate. They are programs designed to produce a stability in liberal capitalism that at the time did not seem inevitable.
Then came postmodernism.......
