it comes out of an alliance between old school tory-style conservatives (hierarchy + religion = peaceful society) and socialists (collective ownership of production) against what they perceived as the depravity of liberalism (self-ownership). it's actually not recent. if you look up the populist and progressive movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, you see a lot of the same sorts of things. they're coming at it from different perspectives, but socialists and conservatives have always had a lot of the same end goals. consider eradicating poverty. conservatives see it as a part of their religion for the rich to be charitable to the poor, whereas socialists see it as social progress, but they're both into doing it and can build alliances over it. it's liberals that have historically told the poor that they're on their own and that their failings are their own responsibility. the history on this is quite revealing, but few people know about it. in canada, we had a "progressive conservative party" built out of such a coalition and still have a "new democratic party" built on "prairie gospel socialism" that is out of the same ideas as the progressive and populist movements.
now, in the united states things got all mixed up in the 30s and came out completely mangled by about 1970. capitalism nearly fell apart in the depression, which forced the capitalists into two camps. one was even more market theory. the other was to look at some quasi-socialist economic ideas to try and stop the system from collapsing. the result was this horrific coalition between labour and capital, which ultimately destroyed socialism in the united states. people blame this politician or that, but the truth is that the socialists sold themselves out by merging with the democrats.
but, you have to remember that, at the time, the democrats would have been considered more "conservative" than the republicans, who had come out of the liberal whig tradition. why didn't the socialists join the republican party? after all, it was the republicans that abolished slavery and the dixiecreats running the south. the answer is that coalition between traditional conservatism and socialism against classical liberalism. the republicans retreated to their whig roots as market fundamentalists (that is, classical liberals) whereas the democrats used socialist ideas that advocated state interference (which is not inconsistent with conservatism).
this is where the definitions started to switch. the republicans wanted to maintain the market system without regulation, and so were branded conservatives. but this is the definition of economic liberalism. the democrats advocated for reform, and so were called liberals. but they wanted to reverse liberal economics and reconstruct the conservative state.
by the time the 70s came around, the reverse was largely completed and it became almost impossible to separate between the left and the traditional right. the left became about how to use power to shape the masses into what the intellectual elite desires, under the view that it's what is best for them. this is where the pc stuff about language comes from. but this is simply toryism, with the aristocracy replaced by the intelligentsia. it's certainly the absolute rejection of socialism.
through the 70s and 80s, students were brought up into this academic environment and began enforcing it very strongly in the 90s. they were called liberals, and sometimes identified as liberals, but were in truth being taught this overwhelmingly tory value system, under the false illusion that it was socialism.
so, why don't liberals support free speech? because they aren't liberals, they're coming out of a late twentieth century merging of toryism and socialism. actual liberals are largely out of the spectrum at the moment. they're largely what you could call "independents".
so, what he's saying is that he'd like to see more of a merging of socialism with liberalism, rather than a merging of socialism with toryism. which means he's an anarchist...
but, here's the thing: most of them will ultimately reject the liberal label. so, you need to take some responsibility in your attacks, which are ultimately strawmen. they've been telling you for years that they aren't liberals, and you keep calling them liberals, anyways. then, you get confused when they don't act like the liberals that they tell you they're not. it's gotta click at some point that you're attacking the collapse of your own strawman argument.
like, with obama, for example. if you ask obama, he'll tell you he's a moderate conservative. i think he's exaggerating; i think he's a radical conservative. but, then people sit around and criticize him for being draconian on speech. but, it was you that called him a liberal. he never owned that. he rejected that.