It hit me in a flash last week as I listened to a professor explain why arguments that sound plausible can turn out to be false. The postliberals, the NatCons, the alt-rightists, the integralists, the Groypers — they all base their case on a fallacy. Philosophers call it “equivocation”, and it means using the same word to mean different things as suits your argument.

They do it with two words in particular: “liberal” and “globalist”. It is worth considering them in turn.