I think this comment from blog.Mises.org is worth repeating in full. “RogerM” responds to this morning’s daily article, first by quoting from it, then expanding on its theme.

“Thus the advocates of totalitarianism chose other tactics. They reversed the meaning of words. They call true or genuine liberty the condition of the individuals under a system in which they have no right other than to obey orders.”

After two years of reading Mises, his insightfulness still surprises me. For more detail on how the left reverses the meanings of words, I highly recommend Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions.” Most of the book explains the leftist definitions of freedom, power, justice and other important words. We are not winning converts from socialism because we use the historically correct definitions of those terms while the left has its own dictionary.

For example, take the term “freedom of speech.” Most of the world uses that term to mean that the state cannot restrict what a person writes or says, which is a process oriented definition. The left, on the other hand, defines freedom of speech as the ability to reach a mass audience, which is a results oriented definition. According to the left, no one has free speech but the owners of mass media. In order for all of us to have free speech, the government must redistribute that media power among the rest of us.

If we’re going to make progress against socialism in this country, we have to challenge them constantly on their use of false definitions for words and at the same time show them that their definitions are wrong. For example, the left defines social justice as the right of everyone on the planet to an equal share of production, regardless of their contribution to that production. This is one of the Ten Commandments of socialism. We must challenge them on that right and show that no such right exists. Sowell writes that except for Hayek, most libertarian writers have just ignored the left’s tactics.

All varieties of collectivist creeds, wrote Ludwig von Mises, are united in their implacable hostility to the fundamental political institutions of the liberal system: majority rule, tolerance of dissenting views, freedom of thought, speech, and the press, equality of all men under the law. This collaboration of collectivist creeds in their attempts to destroy freedom has brought about the mistaken belief that the issue in present-day political antagonisms is individualism versus collectivism. In fact it is a struggle between individualism on the one hand and a multitude of collectivist sects on the other hand whose mutual hatred and hostility is no less ferocious than their abomination of the liberal system. FULL ARTICLE

What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow men and curbs innate tendencies toward arbitrariness and malice is, in the market, not compulsion and coercion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen, and penal courts; it is self-interest. The member of a contractual society is free because he serves others only in serving himself. What restrains him is only the inevitable natural phenomenon of scarcity. For the rest he is free in the range of the market…. A man whose fate is determined by the plans of a superior authority, in which the exclusive power to plan is vested, is not free in the sense in which the term “free” was used and understood by all people until the semantic revolution of our day brought about a confusion of tongues. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von Mises