What do you think?

Robert and Alden think...

As an example, Weaver points out the word freedom and how in our culture the term is largely uncontested. This is rather frightening especially when our president can take this word and use it undefined about 40 times towards an audience who stands and claps on cue. He uses this word which is still undefined as a synecdoche for war, the white house in general ("freedom is on the march") and yet no one questions the meaning of the word or whether this meaning is universal as it is so often believed to be. This country is founded by enlightened thinkers whose main purpose was to question and challenge others' definitions which they found unjust and yet this way of thinking has slowly faded out. The first dictionaries were written during this same time period so these people were constantly clarifying their own definitions while at the same time they all said that it is necessary for a man to form his own beliefs or they are defunct (Milton, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson). Words do not have a set definition, but we have created this illusion by deferring all defintions to those who we deem "more intelligent" or more qualified. The only reason that these people stand above in our own definition is because they considered it their duty to carry on this enlightened way of thinking. If we are to consider ourselves active members of this cultural definition of "freedom" it is necessary to develop our own understandings, concepts, theories, questions etc...
There is an irony to calling freedom a tyrannizing image, but in the sense that it is so ingrained into American rhetoric that it not only conjures certain images for the individual but also gives the illusion that his definition is universal. This is not truth. The chapter even mentions that people have individual rights and have the choice to create their own individual perception of the "cultural ideal." Maybe one day...