the left is broken

Many of us call ourselves "liberals." And it is true that the word "liberal" once described persons who respected the individual and feared the use of mass compulsions. But the leftists have now corrupted that once-proud term to identify themselves and their program of more government ownership of property and more controls over persons. As a result, those of us who believe in freedom must explain that when we call ourselves liberals, we mean liberals in the uncorrupted classical sense. At best, this is awkward and subject to misunderstanding. Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word "libertarian.

the left was meant to stand for freedom. now they want to control everything. when did this happen?

That is why when I use the phrase I always say "Classical Liberal."

It happened more than a century ago with the "progressive" movement.

The word “liberal” is exploited by the left to make it look like they stand for freedom, and to look better in the eyes of the Americans. They started to adopt this label starting from the Great Depression/WW2 on.

The left was never meant to stand for freedom. They’ve always wanted to take control of people’s lives, while using excuses to cover up the fact that they want to control you.

For example, “hate speech”. They can call whatever they don’t like “hate speech” so that they can shut down the arguments they don’t like. They use “inequality” as an excuse to abolish private ownership and capitalism. (And don’t fall for the leftist’s distinction between personal and private property. They want to control everything, personal or private aside.)

The left controlled/controls France in the late 1700s, and Russia (and all the other Soviet countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and more), China, North Korea, Cuba, most of Africa, the Middle East, and more in the 1900s. Well guess what happened. Starvation, poverty, genocide, and overall oppression. In China, 20-50 million people died. In the Soviet Union, 20 million people died. And they intentionally killed Ukrainians in the Holodomor. (By the way, the Soviets called the Ukrainians “kulaks,” which means “fist” in Russian, because a lot of Ukrainians were farmers, and the Soviets considered farmers to be oppressive bourgeoisie, and so they called anyone they considered to be bourgeoisie “kulaks,” as to make it seem justifiable, at least to themselves. In WW2 they called Ukrainians “nazis,” which falls in line with the left calling people they think is more right-wing than Obama “fascists”. And that is the same type of rhetoric Putin is using to justify the war in Ukraine.)

If I hadn’t made my point clear, I’ll summarize it: The left only calls themselves liberal to make themselves look better than they actually are, like makeup, and the left has NEVER stood for freedom.

are they even "democrats" at this point?!?!

They never were.