The Pleasures of Misunderstanding Freedom

Definitions, whether of liberty or of other political terms, are neither true nor false. They are useful or mischievous, and in any case they change over time. They are useful, ordinarily, when they enable people to communicate, i.e., to understand each other, or when they open concepts to further (and mutual) exploration. They are sometimes useful, at least to some men, when by failing to communicate, they enable a man or a group of men to achieve ends that otherwise might not be attained.

Definitions change because new circumstances often require new terms and instead of inventing such terms, men attribute new meanings to old words. They change also because new or derived languages, like the English (or the American), borrow mul...