Freedom requires care with words. When we are not careful, we drift along with familiar solecisms until we founder on the shores of cliché. In conceding a word, we concede a concept, and in conceding a concept, we give up the thing itself. A key example is the concession of the word free before we even begin, as in free market. A different example is our embrace of efficiency, a nonvalue that poses as the highest value. The word resets the conversation. It places why out of bounds, offering an endless how. Efficiency talk distracts us from thinking about purposes and hastens us instead toward
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