I took a glance at the Google definition of "Liberty" this morning and found it lacking. Google seems to think that Freedom is synonymous with Liberty. it ain't. According to Google - But that's wrong because although all liberties are freedoms, not all freedoms are liberties. For instance you are free to kill your neighbor but you are not a liberty to do so. A liberty is any action that does not infringe on the rights of others. Liberty then, is defined as the practice of freedom within the boundaries defined by the rights of others. So what are you at liberty to do? In its natural state, do anything you please so long as you don't violate other people. But we Americans are constantly getting legislated out of our natural state of liberty.
Freedom is when no one or nothing restricts a person in his actions. For example, when there was a covid, the government restricted our movement, forced us to get vaccinated or wear masks. This was done for our benefit, but it is still unclear whether these measures were justified or not. It is very easy for the government or some group of society to restrict freedom by claiming that this is done for the common good, and they are not going to provide evidence of the need for such restrictions.
you're playing a semantic game here, but not doing it well. you have imposed limits on "liberty" that only exist within a given society without acknowledging that these limits are also placed on "freedom". the two are indeed synonymous. in fact, as is shown in definition number three, "liberty" has been endowed by means of common usage with meanings other than those most commonly used. i believe that, in keeping with the name of this sub-forum, you are confusing the concept of liberty with that of civil liberties. these do include the limits on liberty that you describe.
The common usage, like the common usage of most words these days, seems very unconcerned with meaning or history.
"common usage" includes slang, specific incidents that have made their way into the public domain and many other expansions from the basic meaning of a word. i'm sure you can come up with any number of instances where a word or phrase has come to mean something completely different from its original meaning. none of this actually changes the meaning of the word itself.
you're playing word games again and it doesn't become you. the original meaning still remains though we may choose to alter it for other purposes. in this case we are at liberty to kill our neighbors, but killing our neighbor is not among our codified civil liberties. of course, neither is it among our socially acceptable freedoms. neither liberty nor freedom (the terms themselves) are constrained by societal norms.
It's worth noting that Google doesn't write it's own definitions but sources them from various dictionary sites. The definition should have a link to the source site at the top. Regardless, none of those are intended as literal synonyms so it isn't saying they have exactly the same meaning, especially when used in different contexts.
