It hit me in a flash last week as I listened to a professor explain why arguments that sound plausible can turn out to be false. The postliberals, the NatCons, the alt-rightists, the integralists, the Groypers — they all base their case on a fallacy. Philosophers call it “equivocation”, and it means using the same word to mean different things as suits your argument.

They do it with two words in particular: “liberal” and “globalist”. It is worth considering them in turn.

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The word liberal has a handsome etymology. The Latin word “liber” meant a free citizen, as in someone not enslaved. From a different derivation, it also meant book.

Those two meanings were blended in the early English word. To be a liberal was to favor freedom: freedom of speech, worship, association, and contract. It thus meant, by implication, wanting constrained government, low taxes, and strong property rights. Yet it did not mean anarchy. It also meant — this is where the “book” part came in — the virtuous application of wisdom.

The great 17th-century poet and philosopher John Milton drew a........

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