If liberals were like him we would have no issues, and merely different flavors of society in different locations (which would help conduct experiments on what works best).

That's the way it was, good honest debate about acceptable amounts of 'investing' in social safety nets / infrastructure / protective measures / defense / etc using arguable levels of taxpayer money.

That was before the so-called managerial state really took over, i.e. managing society down to the minute details even in family, relationships, identity, associations, etc. The dividing wall has not been based on what we traditionally know as "liberal" and "conservative", not for a while.