I don’t think that the adjective ‘liberal’ necessarily pushes the nouns that it modifies in the direction of complacency and compromise. In the cases relevant here, it is indeed the noun that carries the radicalism and requires those it describes to imagine what Leon Trotsky called “a world more attractive.’ Democrats are radically opposed to all tyrannical, hierarchical, and oligarchic regimes; they imagine a world of self-governing citizens. Socialists are radically opposed to capitalism, laissez-faire economics, and libertarian politics and to the oppression these three together produce; they imagine a more egalitarian society. Nationalists are radically opposed to imperialism and colonial rule; they imagine an international society of free nations. Communitarians are radically critical of a society of self-regarding individuals; they imagine the warmth of communal mutuality. Feminists are radically critical of the subordination of women in the family, the economy, and the state; they imagine a society marked by gender equality. I will leave aside for now religious groups, where the adjective “liberal” may well mean “not radical” (at least some of the time). Politically it clearly doesn’t have that meaning. It means not despotic, not repressive, not cruel–constrained by individual rights. It also means not totalizing, not exclusive, not singular–open to plurality and difference.
Michael Walzer, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” As An Adjective, 37-38.