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Ridiculous Liberal Euphemisms We Accept
It has always irked me how liberals control the language of our national “debates.” They are able to do so primarily because they control the bulk of the MSM. A secondary reason, however, is the fact that we conservatives mindlessly end up parroting their ridiculous euphemisms and adopting their vocabulary.
Here are some examples, along with what I think we conservatives should be using in their place. We need to refer to these concepts in a simple, truthful way. Doing so will reveal how the left’s words belie their true meanings.
I know I’m just scratching the surface. Give us your list of the most notorious terms the left uses and what you believe are their correct replacements.
Pro-Choice = Pro-Abortion
War on Women = Forcing others to pay for your birth control
Undocumented worker/American = Illegal alien
Would-Be Americans = Illegal alien
Single-Payer System or Public Option = Government-Run Healthcare
Fetus = Baby to be aborted
Overseas Contingency Operations = War on Terror
Affirmative Action = Opportunities for those who don’t deserve them
Border adjustment mechanisms = Tariffs
Man-Caused Disaster = Terrorism
Workplace Violence = Terrorism at Fort Hood
Raising money = Taxes
Giveaway for the wealthy = Tax cut
Fees = Taxes
Investment = Government spending
Published in General
Diversity = leftist political spoils system distribution of preferences without regard to actual diversity
How about these?
What the left thinks:
Socialism = fairly spreading the costs and burdens amongst society
Capitalism = letting profits triumph over fairness
What we need to say:
Socialism = Micromanagement of our daily lives, thoughts, and business by self-appointed elitists
Capitalism = a Marxist pejorative for letting people live their lives, run their businesses, and think their thoughts for themselves.
We need to start replacing the word “capitalism” with something more appropriate, like “self-determination”.
Capitalism could be called free markets as long as people don’t confuse markets with just the stock market.
I would correct “investment = government spending” to read
Investment = government deficit spending
In addition …
Amnesty = Transferring Wealth to Criminals
Social Justice = Silencing dissent
Equal Time = Silencing dissent
Freedom of Religion = Silencing dissent
… Jose
You are only slightly off on some of them:
War on Women = Anything a conservative says about women.
Affirmative Action = Damaging the reputation of all sanctioned minorities with college degrees.
Giveaway for the wealthy, Tax cut = any downward adjustment of pre-programmed tax rises. ( A tax rate that is scheduled to go up by 8% next year that is adjusted to only go up 7% is played as a “Tax cut”)
Tragedy = When evil men do evil things to innocent people
Complex = Simple things to which I need to add government
Healthcare = MEDICAL care
My two favorites:
Affirmative Action = Race Based Preferences
Social Justice = Outcome Based Justice (justice by numbers)
On the hopeful side, grass roots both left and right decry Crony Capitalism; something the establishment left and establishment right find sustenance from. It’s too bad the grass roots are so distrustful of each other.
Crony Capitalism = Corporate Welfare = Fascism
I’m with you in spirit but what I hear is “No access to Healthcare” when the claim is accurately described as”No health insurance”
Anyone who has been to an emergency room in the last three decades has seen a plethora of people with no health insurance gaining access to healthcare on someone else’s dime.
Agreed, but you do mean medical insurance, don’t you?
Tolerance = Bullying people into celebrating things they don’t agree with
Income inequality = people providing services that people value more than others get paid more than others
Spread/share the wealth = inept, corrupt politicians taking money from those who earn to buy votes from those that don’t
white privilege/check your privilege = Shut up, cracker!
Generally, when you hear the words “access to” it means “free.” For example, “access to” birth control means “free birth control.” “Denying access to” means “refusing to provide it for free to whoever demands it.” (“Free” of course means “paid for by taxpayers.”)
“Carbon pollution” used in place of “carbon dioxide, a vital component of the earth’s atmosphere, without which all life–plant, animal and human–would die.”
Budget cut = reduction in the rate of growth of spending
Controversial = anything or anyone the Left doesn’t like and you shouldn’t either.
Unexpected = Bad news coming down the pike that we knew about but pretend like we didn’t.
Social darwinism = laissez-faire
Tax expenditure = tax cut
Income inequality = never corrected to include output inequality
Capitalism = anything short of total communism
Racist = the neo-racist’s method of slurring a race he despises
Undemocratic = anything in which conservatives have an equal voice
infrastructure project or infrastructure bill = a method of passing law to allocate tax money of which only 3% will go to the intended purpose and the other 97% go to political cronies.
Living Wage.
I’m not clever enough to come up with something, so I’ll leave it to the professionals.
Gay = Homosexual. I have decided never to use “gay” in any context. My niece is homosexual.
“Making a mistake”=doing something wrong and getting caught. The majority of politicians of both parties who get caught, in their “apologies” nearly always say that they made mistakes.
Fairness: We instead of You get to decide who gets what in society.
The most important thing to remember if you want to win a war of words is to be pithy. Not sure how well I can do, but let me try:
Pro-choice side =pro-choice about honesty side.
Campaign reform=censorship.
Separation of Church and State = Many entries are possible. 1) Anti-Catholic prejudice. ( That is what it meant in the Fifties, but the meaning has broadened lately to include prejudice against other groups.) 2) Censorship. 3) A constitutional principle permitting liberal churches to influence public policy, but barring conservative churches from same. (not pithy, I’m afraid.)
Political correctness: All in favor of our broad-minded liberal reform say Aye. All opposed, shut up.
Sorry, I am a dead loss when it comes to pithiness, but maybe I could write fortune cookies?
AIG
Living Wage.
I’m not clever enough to come up with something, so I’ll leave it to the professionals.
Not a professional but Living Wage = Higher baseline for union wage negotiations.
Also, Living Wage = Fewer jobs for minorities, teens and those entering the job market but still jobs for illegals paid under the table.
(Oh, and Football = Soccer.)
Oh, something that is getting me riled now. The whole “war on women” deal. The left has been pretty free about calling Republicans fascists. Maybe we should point out that any law that requires someone to become an accomplice in murder is a fascist law. And anyone who supports such a law is a fascist? Or am I going too far?
This is amusing, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with playing this game. But I do think it misses the real point, which I’ve ranted about before. The problem is not that the Left and Right use different terms to refer to the same things; it’s that they aren’t even talking about the same things. No meaningful debate is possible as long as the two sides are talking past each other. (And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.)
My favorite is when they just say “Mistakes were made”, as if they just sprouted like mushrooms after a heavy rain.
Working Americans = Any Democratic Party voter
Theodoric Freiberg: Investment = Government spendingLittle Ricky Cobden: Crony Capitalism = Corporate Welfare = Fascism
LRC left out that the term is used by the left only for relatively mild interference in the market that they do not like or even for stuff that is not interference in the market. It does not get applied to even more extreme interference on behalf of their allies such as Solyndra, GM…
The sad thing is that much of fascism involved subsidizing things that actually worked. Many leftist beneficiaries such as Solyndra et al. were more of a Potemkin capitalism that had no chances of working.
Quite often the people they’re talking about are neither of those things.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with my two nominations other than that Obama and his goons have trademarked them, the way the Nixon administration trademarked “at this point in time” for those old enough to remember.
1. “Folks” — Correct me if I’m wrong, but, with the possible exception of Bill O’Reilly, most media types and people in general used to refer to us simply as “people” or “Americans”. Maybe “folks” fits in Tennessee but not in New England, on Fox News or, I would think, in Hyde Park. Obama has popularized it, so now I find it grating.
2. Starting a sentence with “So”. Sure, lots of us do it now, but it’s particularly prevalent among Obama spokespeople who are about to lie to you. Dead giveaway!
Regarding Affirmative Action – it equals Racial Discrimination, not unfair advantage