Freedom Basecamp's Official English - Politic-ese Translator
For people who hear politicians speak and wonder what they just said
This page is new, and unpolished as yet...
Intro: No, politicians are not dumb....well, not all of them. Many know exactly what they are trying to say but know that they can't just come out and say it clearly because
- They are trying to be all things to all people; or
- They are trying to keep the true agenda sounding less threatening than it really is. For example, "stimulus," "income redistribution," "universal health care" and "bail-out" all sound far better than coming out and admitting that what they literally mean in practice (which is where it matters, after all) is: "tax-and-spend," "using the power of government to loot your neighbor and give to people who didn't earn money on their own," "government-run, DMV style health care," and "two bit, banana-republic style government confiscation of private industry."
The list goes on and on....here's where I am going to start keeping my best crack at keeping up with it. I will update this list regularly. Research the topics for yourself, of course. I could just be making this up, after all.....but I'm not. I wish I were. Got a good one? Share it with me, please
| What They Say | What They Mean |
| Too Big to Fail | We don't trust GMs privately-owned competition to do what we would want done if they bought up the assets....which is precisely what would happen if the free market were permitted to operate freely. Of course, with the free market solution, there is no tax money spent at all, so why wouldn't people want that? See "class envy" |
| Income redistribution | Taking money from hard-working, successful people via lopsided taxation and buying votes by giving it to people who didn't earn it. I wish John McCain had been willing to define the term for the masses during the election when he kept spouting the term. He was right, but was trying too hard to soften the message. |
| Compassion | Liberal definition: At the individual level, the ability to find an excuse for someone that gets them off the hook for their failure to meet their responsibilities in life. Also, providing a tax-funded safety net to someone so they are insulated from failure with their neighbor's money....Also Google "enabling behaviors" which are anything but true compassion. Conservative definition: The ability to teach a man to fish rather than give him a fish hand out. Learning to fish can only start with a person's acceptance of the reasons for their past failures (at fishing); which may require the willingness to heed straight talk that sounds "mean-spirited" to a liberal. Yet since only that straight talk can identify the problem (which is the ONLY way to get at a lasting solution to what needs fixing) straight talk is the only true compassion. |
| Conservative (noun) | Conservative about how much government intrusion you want in your private life because you have full confidence in your own ability to provide for your family without a "care-taker" government |
| Liberal (noun) | Desiring a "liberal" dose of government intrusion into your private life; because you are not confident in your own ability to provide for your family and you think it's the government's job to take from your hard-working neighbor and give to you or to the poor (see "less fortunate"). See also "class envy" |
| Class Envy | The oldest political motivation. Learn to recognize it when you watch the news in terms like "rich should pay their fair share" and "working families" |
| Working families | A liberal's term for households led by blue-collar laborers. Meant to imply that doctors with their 16 hour shifts and decades of schooling are not, in fact, among the "working people." See "privileged people" |
| Privileged | A liberal term meant to imply that a person's success has more to do with luck and "winning life's lottery" than it does with preparation and good choices |
| Winning Life's Lottery | A liberal term for someone who has - in fact - worked hard to become successful |
| Less fortunate | Liberal, politically correct term for someone who has HABITUALLY made poor choices in life and HABITUALLY chooses not to work hard to succeed. I say "HABITUAL" to differentiate this phenomenon from the occasional "hard knocks we all experience from time to time in life and that most of us learn from if we own up to our responsibilities rather than make excuses. Common sense word for "less fortunate" = "the poor" See also "life's lottery" and "class envy." |