This argument doesn't work. Promoting "freedom," with respect to software or anything else, is always about promoting some specific freedoms at the expense of others. Copyleft licenses make a different set of tradeoffs than BSD-style licenses, it's true. But that doesn't mean that BSD-style licenses are "objectively" more free. They simply promote certain freedoms of programmers who are one step downstream from the source, at the expense of the freedoms of users who are further downstream. The GPL protects a particular set of freedoms for everyone downstream, at the expense of certain freedoms for those once-removed programmers.
The mere fact of an inherent trade-off in freedoms doesn't mean that the actions of the FSF, or programmers who use the GPL, are "about propagating your view of how things should be" and not "about freedom." That's just as ridiculous as saying that, in authoring the US Bill of Rights (say), the authors were not making decisions "about freedom" because they chose to promote certain freedoms of private citizens at the expense of certain freedoms of agents of the state.
It's a difficult social task to figure out which freedoms are the best to promote, and which can be traded off. But making the hard choices in these trade-offs isn't just a matter of promoting freedoms that one "likes better." Some freedoms are more important than others, insofar as they better promote our various social values and purposes. Whether or not you agree with the FSF's vision of what those values and purposes are and which freedoms best achieve them, it doesn't make any sense to write them off as merely working for some other agenda.
I'm afraid the argument does work. The GPL adds many more restrictions to the recipient of code than does BSD. It's really that simple. The only restriction BSD places on the recipient is to retain the copyright and license notice.
But I don't think I'm going to get this point across. Not while "freedom" is taken to mean something other than the dictionary definition.
I don't think anyone disputes that the GPL places more restrictions on a recipient of the code than a BSD license does. And you're right that, in one (extremely narrow) sense, this grants recipients of BSD-licensed code more "freedom" than recipients of GPL-licensed code.
The free software movement is about granting users freedom in this narrow sense, but it is also about building a society in which software freedom is valued and protected in a much broader sense. Software freedom is a social, moral and cultural goal in the same way that freedom of the press, freedom of association, or freedom from malicious prosecution are. These are "freedoms" in a broader sense than the dictionary definition, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that "freedom" is the wrong word to use.
Indeed, the broad sense of "freedom" is the one that is of primary importance, because without the social institutions that implement the broad sense of "freedom," the narrow sense of individual freedom in a particular setting becomes irrelevant or, worse, non-existent. Unless we have freedom of the press in the broad sense, for example, the fact that any particular publisher is free to say what it wants remains hollow. (One could hardly say, for example, that a country which has a single publisher that's free to publish as it pleases -- the state-run media outlet -- has a "free press.") A whole series of institutions are required to have a free press: a legal system that protects free printed speech, a system of publishers that actually produce that printed speech, an economic system that supports those publishers, and so on. In the same way, a whole series of institutions are required for software freedom: a system that protects certain freedoms of use for all users, as well as a system for developing free software, and for supporting that development in one way or another. It is these institutions that the GPL helps create; and in their absence, the possibility of BSD-licensed code, whether or not it would be "more free" in a particular case, is irrelevant to the social goal of software freedom for everyone.
Unfortunately, it is precisely the broad sense of "freedom" as a network of social institutions that define, protect and promote individual freedoms (in the narrow sense) that introduces the trade-offs and hard choices, the balancing act between certain particular freedoms of certain individuals and other freedoms of other individuals. But again, this hardly means that freedoms in the broad sense are not properly so called. And unless we make those hard choices, the narrow, individual freedoms that arise from them will not exist in a meaningful way.
The mere fact of an inherent trade-off in freedoms doesn't mean that the actions of the FSF, or programmers who use the GPL, are "about propagating your view of how things should be" and not "about freedom." That's just as ridiculous as saying that, in authoring the US Bill of Rights (say), the authors were not making decisions "about freedom" because they chose to promote certain freedoms of private citizens at the expense of certain freedoms of agents of the state.
It's a difficult social task to figure out which freedoms are the best to promote, and which can be traded off. But making the hard choices in these trade-offs isn't just a matter of promoting freedoms that one "likes better." Some freedoms are more important than others, insofar as they better promote our various social values and purposes. Whether or not you agree with the FSF's vision of what those values and purposes are and which freedoms best achieve them, it doesn't make any sense to write them off as merely working for some other agenda.