Democracy. Fair election processes. "Our freedom is under siege." I don't think these words mean the same thing to all people, so how can we have a conversation?
Abraham Lincoln was confronted by this problem on a colossal scale. The rank and file on both sides believed to their very marrow that they were right and that their cause was just, even using the same words. Liberty and Freedom.
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and
the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare
for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases
with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same
word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the
product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows
that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two
different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator,
while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of
liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and
the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and
precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures,
even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold
the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke
of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by
others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the
people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and
thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has
been repudiated."
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