What it means to be a liberal?

From Chicago Tribute a law professor tries to clear the name for liberals. Of his 10 propositions of what liberals stand for, the top one rings very much true to me:

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset any fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.

There have been many times I reflected and took a turn in a my life when I discovered my own ignorance. I used to think Bill O'Reilly was honest and independent.

When I look at the people that have shaped my way of thinking in some way or other, Bill Maher, Karl Weick, Carl Jung, and Tyler Cowen recently, they tend to have one thing in common that they admit that they are not sure about their own truths, and they question how others can be so sure. In a world of vast uncertainties, having concrete rules is one way of wading through the jungles, but you run the risks of dogmatizing your thinking and missing the richness and nuances of life. Trial-and-error, on the other hand, could be untidy and sometime painful, but it's likely to more fruitful in the end.