"If John Stuart Mill were around today, he would likely ask, 'When did Bob Wright and the left turn against free speech?'"

Wrote Meade in the thread about the dispute between me and Bob Wright, in which Bob Wright wanted to limit the concept of "free speech" to rights the individual holds against the government. Meade quoted John Stuart Mill, who wrote:

"Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”

Penetrating much more deeply... enslaving the soul itself!

Wright also argued against the evolution of the meaning of words, but what if strict usage had checked the evolution of the meaning of the word "liberal"? Wright would need to resist calling himself a liberal.