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April 13, 2005
A Short Lexicon of the Neo-con Language
I've been informally collecting code phrases and non-standard usages of the more extreme political right and the religious right for a while. This seems like as good a time as any to provide a short lexicon for those who may need help in understanding what the President and his most ardent supporters mean when they speak or write. Sometimes the religious right uses a word or phrase in a different way than the current in government spokespersons. I will attempt to note these important differences.
- Better off - anyone earning over $20,000/year (when talking about cuts in Social Social Security), See "lowest income taxpayers"
- Constitutional option - previously called the nuclear option, intended to ratify wingnut judges by limited debate in the Senate
- Culture of Life - anti-abortion, occasionally anti-euthanasia
- Dangerous dictator - any head of state who was once a business partner that has now turned against the person calling him a dangerous dictator.
- Democracy - an aristocracy masquerading as theocracy when used by politicos; a theocracy when used by the religious right
- Energy independence - any of several programs to drill for oil and natural gas in environmentally fragile locations (Florida excepted)
- Environmental protection - any of a number of ideas, laws and programs to harm the environment.
- Evidence - lies and errors.
- Family values - hatred of gays.
- History - something Neo-cons make.
- Judicial activist - any judge or court, no matter how conservative, that rules, even once, against a pet position.
- Judicial reform - any of a number of attempts to weaken the courts and, in particular, the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
- Junk Science - what most scientists is a given discipline agree upon. See "sound science".1
- Lowest income taxpayers - anyone earning under $100,000 (when selling tax cuts), See "Better off"
- Major crisis - minor problem or annoyance.
- Middle class - any owner of two or more properties with an annual earned income over $200,000.00 per year or an annual unearned income of over $100,000.00, preferably both.
- Ownership society - increased risk for individual and families, the less able to manage the risk, the greater the risk.
- Patriot - anyone willing to lie or dissemble for the current US government.
- Personal accounts - privatization of Social Security.
- Privatization - destroying successful governmental programs.
- Regime chance - war.
- Religion - any one of several institutions and belief systems that are useful crowd control mechanisms when spoken by a politico. When spoken by a member of the religious right, the "correct" institution and belief system.
- Self-defense - anything the NRA wants it to mean including arming school teachers.
- Sex - something too upsetting to tell the truth about except when the word is used with reference to liberal or moderate opponents who, like others, occasionally have transgressions in this area. In this latter case, all details, no matter how pornographic, must be made public.
- Spreading democracy - war
- Sound Science - the position of any scientist, no matter how fringy with whom I agree. See "Junk Science"1
- Support the troops - support any war no matter how ill conceived.
- Supporter of democracy - any dictator who currently supports the US position.
- Taxpayers - see "middle class" above.
- Tax reform - any of several ideas, laws and programs to shift the burden of financing the government to those who can least afford to shoulder that burden.
- Teach the controversy - teach creationism
- Terrorist suspect - anyone who can not easily fake a Texas accent and use associated vocabulary and grammar or who looks out of place when wearing cowboy boots.
- The coalition of the willing - any of several countries who contributed even a single solder to the Iraq war, even if bribed to do so.
- Theory - a random guess or pet idea
- Values - hating gays, loving guns, going to war, hating choice, lowering taxes for the rich, destroying working government programs, drilling for oil, logging old growth trees, favoring the wealthy, imposing your religion on others . . . you know, values.
- Working people - see "middle class" above.
Notes:
1) Thanks to Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science
2)Once upon a time, long ago, a well meaning professor entered into a failed attempt to teach a few of us graduate students classical, literary Arabic. He started the first class by noting that many words in the Arabic vocabulary have three meanings: the principle meaning, the exact opposite, and something profane. I have come to learn that this is true of many vocabularies. I think of the standard spoken English word "bad." In so far that these three meaning apply to many words in some languages, they tend to apply to every word and phrase in the Neo-con language.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 13, 2005 11:12 AM | Read more on Humor |
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