OPINION - Free speech is the least valued but most important cause today

Words, as we know, no longer mean what they used to. Some have been realigned, some reassigned, and some of the peskier ones have been banished, presumably for good. Some new words have appeared out of nowhere, and some older ones are now almost unrecognisable. “Blessed”, for instance, is now little but a fatuous Instagram cliché, usually accompanying a photograph of a saturated sunset or a particularly expensive meal (over-filtered and carefully cropped). It is meant to express a feeling of satisfaction with one’s lot but is actually an expression of the exact opposite: you don’t see many Instagram posts of the Wembley section of the North Circular at rush hour in the rain, with “Blessed” nestling underneath.