I think reading classical liberal authors like Locke, Hume, Mill, Bentham, Ricardo, Smith, Voltaire, and Montesquieu is the best way to understand. (And as an aside, I think absolutely everyone on Earth should read Kant, to understand anything that came after him, it is necessary without a shadow of a doubt, even to understand Marxism). But overall, starting with where these ideas came from is the ideal way in my mind.