As a side note, did anyone else watch the republican debates last night? It was a real shocker. Ron Paul was the only one that even bothered to mention habeas corpus, and IMHO it’s gotta be the first time in history that anybody on a mainstream media show advocated abolishment of the income tax and the Federal Reserve. He even correctly defined inflation as the printing of money. When he said if elected he would abolish the IRS immediately – my jaw dropped to the floor. Somebody actually said it on TV – the censors probably had to restrain themselves from bleeping it out. I’m surprised that more people aren’t talking about it.

“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.

“A man whose fate is determined by the plans of a superior authority…”

I do wish he hadn’t included the word “superior” in there.