I think it worth saying that Liberalism as I define it below was developed by white Europeans, and their descendants in North America. No other culture has anything like it, of which I am aware. Certainly, most major nations have had periods of relative tolerance, in which diverse behaviors and creeds coexisted peacefully, but everywhere else one group has had dominant social status IN PRINCIPLE, and normally by law. Almost all nations historically have had slavery, with most slaves in white nations having been white, and most slaves in black nations having been black.
As I said earlier, America is the only nation to have rejected slavery in principle to such an extent that it was willing to wage an enormously destructive war over it (and yes, I know the pedantic quibbles that can be made with this statement).
Does this make whites superior to other races? No, but it makes our cultural history more benign than that of other races. We of course are also the only ones to have waged global wars, to have developed weapons capable of destroying the human race, and of course to have conquered and colonized most of the planet. With great capability comes great potential both for good and evil. Had we not so much as invented the wheel, we would have remained capable of death and destruction.
From my other website, here is my treatment of Liberalism as I conceive it:
Liberalism: Politically, the doctrine that governments are a necessary evil—since for now at least the self restraint facilitated by various types of
virtue is insufficient to the task of protecting the weakest among us—but
that authority should be spread as broadly as possible, and always kept
within a context of structural blocks to the unlimited consolidation of
power.
The American Constitution is the most perfect Liberal document ever
created. We all know that the three branches of the Federal Government
check one another (in theory: practically, there exists no legislative
remedy, currently, to the usurpation of authority by the Supreme Court),
but there are many other structural balances. The authority of the Federal
Government was intended to be checked by the sovereign States, as
codifed in the 10th Amendment. The authority of our elected
representatives—who can do what they want once they are elected—is
checked by regular votes. The potential usurpation of authority by a
centralized military is checked by the guarantee of gun ownership, and the
existence of State militias. The underlying idea is that unlimited power,
once granted, and even if benign at first, will sooner or later become
malignant.
Philosophically, Liberalism is the idea that since none of us can be presumed to possess absolute truth, that all of us be free to believe and say what we want, provided we injure no one else in so doing, and that the role of government is to protect those rights.
Constitutionally, the right to regulate areas of moral ambiguity were intended to
rest with the States.This would include abortion, drug regulation, euthanasia, prostitution, and the provision of social services.