take liberties
- freedom of speech
and how bizarre those would sound if the words were reversed.

Very astute, Bridget. Great insight! [Aside: I am sorry if the following sounds pretentious, Bridget, but it is really your point not mine, so any liberty I am taking is an enlargement of your own insight, not an expression of mine.]

Freedom just wants to be free. Too much freedom can result in a loss of liberty for some.* So someone has to take it back. When they take it back, they don't take anyone's legitimate freedom away. They just take their own "liberty" back. Maybe that's why we "take liberties" but not "freedoms" [as you suggested].

It is interesting that it is "liberty" and not "freedom" which is hallowed in Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and the Declaration of Independence.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

Mr. Lincoln asserts to-day, as he did at Chicago, that the negro was included in that clause of the Declaration of Independence which says that all men were created equal, and endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page347.html

"Freedom of speech", as you have implied, is unconstrained. Who was it who said: "I disapprove of what you said, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Apparently, it wasn't Voltaire:

"Voltaire didn't pen or utter the sentiment you quote. According to a number of web sites, "The phrase was invented by a later author as an epitome of his attitude." It comes from The Friends of Voltaire, written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall and published in 1906 under the pseudonym Stephen G. Tallentyre. Hall said that she paraphrased Voltaire's words in his "Treatise on Toleration," ..."

http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20030331.html

Of course, we no longer consider "freedom of speech" entirely free. "Hate speech" is a crime, particularly if it incites people to crimes of violence.

There is considerable debate over how or whether hate speech can be defined; whether speech thus labeled ought to be regulated; and if so, how and by whom. These debates center on three critical questions: First, what is the force of speech? Is it the expression of personal thoughts, or is it a form of action that affects and can harm others? Second, is the free expression of ideas which some perceive as hateful necessary for healthy public debate, or is it harmful to public debate? Third, should governmental policies be founded upon the protection of interests and rights of individuals, or of identifiable groups — such as sexual orientation (e.g., homosexuals) and race (e.g., racial minorities)? Legitimate criticism normally protected in USA under the First Amendment is sometimes labeled "hate speech" by the critiqued.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

* This recalls quote Aorto gave us in her "irony" thread:

"When everyone knows good as good, this is not good." Tao Te Ching, Cleary translation.

"Freedom of speech" comes with some limitations on freedom. Is that ironic? Or just natural justice?