Johnson, aside from having a handy little refresher on what the words ‘socialism’ and ‘libertarian’ actually mean, also dives a little deeper into what implications the popular misconception of these words carry for the political climate at large:

I don’t think this is a matter simply of linguistic drift or the mutation that political terms undergo when they cross the Atlantic. “Words are failing us,” Mr Lilla writes, and I agree. The cause seems, at least to me, fairly obvious. People tend to use these labels more about their opponents than they do about themselves. The purpose of the label is not to describe someone but to classify him, to put him in the “enemy” box, and that makes playing fast and loose with the meaning of the word practically unavoidable.

Along similar lines, Ginandtacos.com chimes in nicely with a condemnation of the use of the word “homeland” in political discourse:

What we’re seeing is a symptom of a political class relying increasingly on jingoistic appeals and language and a population learning how to define itself, its nation, and its citizenship in the basest terms – you are One of Us or One of Them. You Belong or you are The Other. It’s the mindset of a populace that is warming up to the idea of arbitrary arrest and detention of its own members in the name of order, security, and preservation of the social order.

Yet more of the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” rhetoric, it seems. It seemed ridiculous when Gaston said it in Beauty and the Beast, it seemed ridiculous when Bush Jr. declared the war on terror, and it seems ridiculous now.

And yes, I just made a Disney reference in discussing international politics. Deal with it.