What It Meant to Be Liberal

To me, it meant two basic things:

1) Tolerance. Tolerance for people and lifestyles different from your own because life is rich, complex, contradictory and thus requires tolerance for a variety of ways to live it. 

2) A basic acknowledgement that systems are not always fair and just and can be gamed to favor certain people over others. And we ought to strive to fix those unfairnesses.

These are things I still believe. 

But I think people who call themselves liberal today, don't believe in either of these ideas. They certainly don't believe in #1. They don't even support dissent from people who essentially agree with them, but might argue for different tactics. But I also don't think they believe in #2 anymore, either. They believe instead in a more radical idea of historical unfairness and that "systems" must overcorrected to account for historical wrongs. They don't always explicitly say #2, but it's the subtextual argument they are making (and have been making). This is utopian and impossible and perhaps why the Left is becoming so intolerant and totalitarian. Their goals and desires do not sync with reality.