How does the U. S. not live up to our liberal values?

What one makes of all this will depend in part on how one understands the American political tradition. Many liberals view the rejection of liberalism as an alarming threat to "liberal democracy" — and American democracy, in particular — along with the institutions and values associated with it, which include representative government, the separation of powers, free markets, and religious liberty and tolerance. Their concerns are valid, insofar as some of liberalism's most vocal critics on the right and left indict the American political project and its founding as both misbegotten and irredeemably liberal.