President Obama has developed this perversion of language into an art form.
His first campaign spoke of “Change we can believe in” without once explaining change from what and to what. He couldn’t, because the change he sought was from semi-freedom to unfreedom.
He spoke of “hope” without once naming what was to be hoped for. He couldn’t, because, for him, the object of that hope was government handouts funded by money taken from those who had earned it–legalized plunder, in the well-turned phrase of Frederic Bastiat.
“We’re all in this together,” the President repeatedly says–without telling us what “this” is. The woozy, undefined “this” turns out to be a package-deal of the voluntary cooperation of free men and the forced regimentation of rightless serfs of an omnipotent state.
As an aid to those who treasure their freedom, I offer this dictionary of Obamaspeak, so that they may know what they are actually up against.
Progressive: one who opposes progress in every form. The “Progressive” opposes nuclear power, coal and oil power, the pharmaceutical industry, and industrialization in general. In politics, the “Progressive” favors a return to the age-old domination of the individual by authority. The “Progressive” rejects the very idea of progress, denying that any society is objectively more advanced than any other. He regards the term “primitive” as politically incorrect. Resurrecting Rousseau’s “noble savage” (though opposing the term “savage”), he claims that savage tribes “live in harmony with their natural environment,” blanking out such facts as their precarious existence, their lifespan of about thirty years, and their constant brutal wars with other tribes.
Ideologue: anyone who has a principled opposition to Obama’s ideology.
Bipartisan: the caving in of the opposition to the President’s “Progressive” legislation.
Folks: people who are expected to regard the President as, aw shucks, just like them–despite the fact that he is constantly telling them that they cannot be trusted to make their own decisions and live their own lives.
Access (as in “access to healthcare”): the ability to be provided with the products of others’ work without having to pay for them.
Transitioning: a process by which “folks” are forced, under penalty of fines and jails, to do what the President knows is best for them, but which they persist in believing is bad for them. E.g., “transitioning to a single-payer system.”
Single-payer system: an arrangement in which the government seizes the funds of the multitude, through taxation and inflation, to pay bottom-dollar for healthcare dictated by the government.
Common sense: the unthought out, emotion-driven feel of things common to “Progressives.”
Stakeholder: anyone who is not an owner, who has not put his own money into the stock of a business, but who is granted the right to dictate its policies.
Worn-out dogmas: the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Something greater than ourselves: the government.
