January 1, 2011

Semantic Engineering for Conservatives

By Jim Guirard

It's easy to find examples of semantic engineering -- the use of words or phrases that mask a concept's true meaning -- among the left.  Indeed, the right has long given a lot of ground in the arena  of words...but that can (and should) change.  To that effect, here is a partial list of semantic gems for every conservative to incorporate into his political lexicon.

Communoid - communist-like; "former" communists who may still be

Fascist-Left - Hitler and Mussolini were reactionary-left "national" socialists, too

Gulag Guevara - the Cuban prison system, renamed for its founder, "Che" Guevara

Cubazuela - the former Venezuela, which is becoming another Cuba

ProgSoc - the Orwellian contraction of "Progressive-Socialist"

POOTUS - Proponent of Over-Taxing US (e.g., President Barack Obama)

Exurgents - imported or foreign "insurgents" (de facto "occupiers" themselves)

OutForcing of jobs - disincentives which cause much of the current "outsourcing"

Age of SCAMALOT - correct legacy label for Obama's scam-filled presidency

Branch Carbonian Cult - correct name for the pseudo-religious global warming movement

CommieCzars - Obama's unconfirmed, unaccountable, and socialistic regulatory "czars"

Chavista-Bolshevista Revolution - Bolshevist and Communoid, but not so-called "Bolivarian"

OPRAH Land - the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-And-Hillary Land Plantation's version of socialism

Properganda - selective, self-serving information -- but which is also certifiably true

Obama's Great LEAHP Backward - his policy of "Less Energy At Higher Prices"

...and several more, as set forth in both AmericanThinker and TrueSpeak.org.

From OPRAH Land "BUYpartisanship" to the TPM's "ConCentrism"

In the same spirit of innovation and truth-in-language (and in hopes that other right-of-center activists will actually begin using them), here are fifteen additional terms and frames of reference -- which might help us to win the ongoing socioeconomic, ideological, and political wars against our previously defined "ProgSoc," "Scamalot," "OPRAH Land," and "Branch Carbonian Cult" adversaries.

  1. BUYpartisanship - the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democrats' practice of "buying" support and votes (especially from partisan fellow Democrats!) in favor of unpopular legislation.
  2. PlannedParentcy - what Barack Obama was really endorsing and promising when we thought we heard him promise "transparency," of which there has been virtually none.
  3. OPRAHcare - the new government-run health care system now being inflicted upon us by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-And-Hillary Regime. (We should never forget Hillary Clinton, whose first attempt at "nationalized" medical care was so correctly rejected in 1992-93.)
  4. Simulus - the correct name for Obama's and Pelosi-Reid's wasteful and bureaucratic pretense of economic "stimulus" -- i.e., a mere simulation of stimulation.
  5. BHOtoxin - poisonous big government, BarackHusseinObama-style, cynically masked by such false modifiers as "centrist," "transparent," "accountable," and "bipartisan."
  6. "Jihad" al-Shaitani - so-called "Holy War" which is patently Satanic and whose fomenters and practitioners are bound not for Allah's Jennah (Paradise), but for Satan's Jahannam (Eternal Hellfire). Other such options would include "Jihad al-Mufsiduun" (of the evildoers), "Jihad al-Murtaduun" (of the apostates), "Jihad al-Irhabiyuun" (of the terrorists), etc.
  7. ChairMa'am - polite new name for the female "chair" of an organization - e.g., the case of "Madam ChairMa'am" Barbara Boxer of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment.
  8. "Reid my lips" - the first half of Senator Scary Harry Reid's past, present, and future calls for "more new taxes."
  9. Cinco de Mayo, SI!! "Stinkos" de Mexico, NO!! - applause for Mexico's National Day of May 5, but harsh rejection of the border-busting, drug-smuggling, kidnapping, scofflaw Mexican "stinkos" streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border.
  10. Greater Opportunities Party - new forward-looking Republicans' meaning of "GOP," which now means Grand Old Party -- so recommended by this writer for several years and now by U.S. Senator-Elect Marco Rubio of Florida, as well.
  11. Deemulation - a fraudulent form of "legislation" via Pelosi-style "deeming" a controversial bill to have been adopted by the House, without an up-or-down vote ever being taken.
  12. BAFLAcrats - "Blame America First, Last & Always" leftists and progressives who reject American exceptionalism and the fundamental superiority of individualism and free enterprise over socialism, collectivism, and redistribution.
  13. SorOctopus - the multi-tentacle politico-economic "octopus" of interlocking foundations, think-tanks, pressure groups, political action committees, media watch-groups, websites, cap-and-trade activists, voter registration groups, and election day "ground-game" organizations -- funded and minutely guided by self-confessed socialist and BAFLAcrat (see #12 above) billionaire George Soros.
  14. TPM and TPMers - shorthand for the fast-growing Tea Parties Movement and its members.  These labels avoid the both careless and intentionally false labeling of this patriotic grassroots "awakening" of millions of Americans as a separate political party -- which it is not.
  15. ConCentrism - the proper label for the Tea Party Movement's ideological and socio-economic identity, confirming that the TPM is a grassroots alliance of Conservatives and of free-enterprise, lower-taxes and smaller-government Centrists: middle class, working class, god-and-guns class, center-right  and Main Street "ConCentrists"

Correctly Labeling a National Vote of "NO CONFIDENCE"

Of equal importance to all of these new labels combined is the well-known but seldom-spoken term of "no confidence" which best describes the true meaning of the November 2, 2010 midterm congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative elections -- in which even Barack Obama himself admitted to having received a major "shellacking."

Other descriptive terms for the ProgSocs' stunning loss of 63 or more House seats, six Senate seats, ten governorships, and almost seven hundred state legislative seats are repudiation, rejection, tidal wave, slap-down, landslide defeat, tsunami, revulsion, stomping, wipe-out, whipping, eviction, massive reversal, condemnation, ass-kicking, and the like.

While all of these terms are essentially true and politically correct, none of them meets the high standard once set by that great man of words, Mark Twain -- who said something to the effect of that the difference between exactly the right word or label and one which is fairly correct but not quite on the mark "is akin to the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

In this case, the optimally correct term is that of an emphatic vote of no confidence -- which is the universal codeword for public rejection.  In fact, in the typical parliamentary systems of government across the world, it is a verdict so powerfully negative as to require that the government in office resign and submit to new elections.

In the broad scope of politics and public opinion, such a verdict speaks not to one or more specific issues -- health care, the environment, energy sufficiency, terrorism, unemployment, taxes, etc. -- but serves, instead, as a blanket condemnation as deep as it is wide.  In layman's terms, it is not so much a feeling, but a definitive conclusion that "enough is enough!"

And by coincidence of timing, the early November G-20 Conference in Seoul, South Korea resulted in much the same negative verdict with regard to QE2-style (print-borrow-tax-and-spend) Obamanomics at the international level, as well.

In the psychology of the ancient Chinese dynasties, the equivalent of this widespread loss of confidence would have been a quiet but insistent conclusion that the troubled dynasty in power had "lost the mandate of Heaven" and must be replaced -- in much the same way that a "progressively worse" Barack Obama and his reactionary-left entourage will surely be replaced in America's next no confidence verdict in November 2012.

A D.C.-area attorney and national security strategist, Jim Guirard was longtime chief of staff to former U.S. Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long.  His TrueSpeak.org website focuses on truth in language and truth in history in public discourse.
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