Clay Risen has a perceptive article in Slate today, warning non-German observers that Angela Merkel (Gerd Schr?der’s likely successor) is no Margaret Thatcher. But embedded in that article is this astounding sentence:

[T]he CDU … is actually an alliance between the more free-market-oriented Christian Democrats, from which Merkel hails, and the more economically liberal Bavarian Christian Social Union. [Emph. added.]

Would these two terms be viewed as opposites anyplace else than America? In any other country, would the term ‘economically liberal’, as applied to the CSU, make any sense at all? (For the thing about the CSU is that it is more culturally conservative and less economically liberal than its sister party.)

Which does not detract, of course, from what Risen hints at: ‘economic liberalism’ is a relative concept. If the Union, even under Merkel, proves more liberal than the SPD, it will be a difference of degree not kind; and I suspect of quite modest degree at that.