"Conservatism" , lol
Best to leave your pretentious quips at home, Franzl. Some of us are trying to learn political science here.
Your highly qualified opinions would be welcome.
It's a good point though. Classic Liberalism is to the right of center. And "conservatism" implies a value system, whereas you are looking only at economic ideology. Some posters here use "statism" versus "individualism" as the goalposts. I usually talk about "libertarians" and "socialists" as opposites. There are many terms floating around out there.
So Liberalism is now Centrism?
Yes, in many contexts putting "liberal" at the balance point is orthodox and legitimate. Here's an example of a fairly academic set of labels by one analyst. Note the use of "Liberal" at the center:
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/politicalspectrum.shtmlObviously the profusion of labels--and the fact that they are used differently in different contexts and by different writers--causes much confusion. This is probably why the writers of the little tests like Political Compass and Political Matrix have given up on such terms, and gone strictly to numeric labels. The tests have many weaknesses, but at least their identifying labels are clear. I may not know what "conservatism" or "liberalism" means, but I do know where two numbers lie, relative to one another, on a number line.