[Connor_Creegan]

The two might be conceptually-separable but they tend to go hand in hand in practice. Although maybe you have some different things in mind by "socially liberal" than I do.

When I think "liberal" I think the liberal vein of natural rights philosophy - Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Jefferson, et cetera - which implies a kind of unique anthropology in which man is no longer axiomatically communal, but first and foremost an individual without a common final end with his fellow man. This is the philosophical basis for both "economic" and "social" liberalism.