Democrats redefined freedom more than a century ago (“Defining ‘Freedom’ Down at the DNC,” Review & Outlook, Aug. 23). President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive, likened citizens to automobile parts and wise politicians to master mechanics. To be “free” is to do whatever the wise politician thinks you should do to help society run smoothly. After all, engines don’t run smoothly when each part thinks independently.

The semantic obfuscations employed by today’s progressives inculcate a political vision that has evolved from Wilson’s. An enforced moral monoculture is now “diversity.” Excluding ideas that reject progressivism is “inclusion.” Quietly minding one’s own business is “violence.” Refusing to discriminate on the basis of race is “racism.” Pro-Hamas demonstrators somehow think it is Israel, rather than Hamas itself, that seeks to enact “genocide.”

Em. Prof. Griffin Trotter

Saint Louis University

Oak Harbor, Wash.

Your editorial is correct in arguing that Democrats twist the word “freedom” to mean something the Framers of the U.S. Constitution never intended. Namely, the use of government to achieve social or distributive justice by directing scarce resources to political ends satisfying interest groups, rather than to secure the natural rights of each individual.

As James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution, wrote in 1792: “That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”

With limited government under a just rule of law, and a free-market economy, people are more likely to enjoy tranquility and prosperity than in a society lacking those institutions.