lmao what is it with people trying to map abstract political concepts onto geometric and spacial shapes?

The colloquial meaning of "liberal" used by some Americans does not align with how it's used in political theory. That's okay, words have different meaning in different contexts.

"Left" and "right" stem from the French Revolution (1789!) where the people who sat on the left of the National Assembly were progressives that supported the revolution and people who sat on the right were conservatives that wanted to preserve the old system. Liberalism (as defined in political theory, not colloquially) is the dominant global ideology and thus is no longer progressive or radical. It may have been progressive when monarchy was the main form of government, propping up feudalism as the main economic structure. But that's obviously not how the world works 200+ years later