Abraham Lincoln once observed that we all declare for liberty, but in using the same word, we do not all mean the same thing. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, he said, and the sheep thanks him as a liberator while the wolf denounces him as a destroyer of liberty. Words matter. When words are bent, voters are misled.

We have been told for years, in leading newspapers and in classrooms, that Adolf Hitler was a man of the “Right,” and therefore a distant cousin of the American conservative. The label is then hung, election after election, on whichever Republican is handy. Is it true? Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said.