> I mean you can't properly call yourself a liberal by any textbook definition of liberalism and be in ok with firing people for their political views.

Isn't this usage (not being okay with firing people arbitrarily) more compatible with the US/North American sense of 'liberal' than the modern non-Anglo European sense of 'liberal'? Specifically, the emphasis on individual liberties over government regulation, which the US sense of 'liberal' eschewed while keeping the social liberalism dimension. 'Liberal' parties at least in German-speaking countries tend to be very approximately (European) center-right, for instance.