The modern age is full of charlatans.  They claim to free you from oppression while fastening the chains tighter.  Their slogans promise equality, fairness, and security.  Behind the curtain, it’s all the same: control.

Freedom is simple.  People know how to trade, work, and live without orders from a bureaucrat.  They don’t need permission slips to buy and sell.  They don’t need central planners to tell them what’s fair.  Order emerges naturally from property and exchange.  That truth threatens the charlatan, who survives only by issuing commands.

His favorite weapon is not force, but language.  Words are stripped of meaning and repainted.  “Liberal,” once the banner of freedom, now means statist control.  “Progress,” once a movement away from power, now means an expansion of it.  “Rights,” once protection from the state, now mean claims upon others enforced by the state.  Lenin himself understood the tactic: destroy the vocabulary, and you destroy the resistance.  If the people can’t describe freedom, they can’t defend it.

This isn’t a new tactic.  Every regime that longed for power has used it.  Tyrants rewrite the dictionary before they rewrite the laws.  The words remain familiar, but the definitions are inverted.  Liberty becomes obedience.  Justice becomes redistribution.  Truth becomes consensus.  People fall into the trap without realizing it.  They repeat the new meanings as if they were their own thoughts.

The charlatans thrive on this confusion.  The student who thinks “liberal” means more government.  The worker who thinks “rights” mean government checks.  The journalist who thinks “progress” means speech codes.  None of them see that they’re repeating slogans crafted to bind them.  They think they’re enlightened.  In reality, they’re tools for the far left, useful mouthpieces for those who seek control.

The trick works because envy and resentment are easy to stir.  The failed writer resents the successful entrepreneur.  The professor resents the businessman.  The bureaucrat resents the inventor.  They don’t understand that wealth flows toward service to the public.  They imagine it stolen because they can’t earn it.  The charlatan feeds this envy and offers a solution: more power for the state.  Always another law.  Always another hand in your pocket.

Step by step, control replaces freedom.  Truth is branded as hate.  Dissent is labeled misinformation.  Property becomes privilege.  Speech becomes harm.  The masses believe the inversion.  They chant the slogans and silence the critics, never realizing they cheer their own captivity.

History shows where this leads.  When language collapses, tyranny follows.  Once you accept that freedom means obedience, you’ll accept that slavery is liberty.  Once you accept that truth is whatever the party declares, you’ll accept that lies are reality.  A population that can’t speak clearly can’t think clearly.  A people that can’t think clearly can’t resist.

Real freedom doesn’t wear a mask.  It doesn’t beg for approval.  It doesn’t hide behind twisted words.  It exists where men own themselves, their labor, and their property.  Anything less is fraud.  The charlatans know this, which is why they labor night and day to keep you from seeing it.

Reference

Ludwig von Mises; The Anti-Capitalist Mentality