Liberalism the belief in freedom and equality is the American mainstream and the same is true throughout most of the West The liberals in the sixties were as anti communist as the conservatives The Left then were the communists and the Right were the people who opposed labor unions and integration Then the Right found political advantage in calling people who supported labor unions and the mixing of the races Leftists a word they also applied to hippies and earlier Beatniks the nik suffix came from Sputnik