Most Americans don’t know what capitalism is either. We’ve been so brainwashed into believing capitalism and simple commerce are the same thing that people think any system that isn’t capitalism is some authoritarian hellscape where the government forces you at gunpoint to share your toothbrush with everyone else in the neighborhood because personal property will be outlawed somehow.

Most Americans think that “liberal” is someone on the left, while most European nations (as well as what little political theory I had) place them somewhere in the center, usually fiscally progressive but socially conservative.