acting white: taking personal responsibility, quoting the Constitution, opposing big government, taking pride in America, etc.

assimilation: according to Michelle Malkin, “a Class A felony in the liberal rulebook and a threat to the Democratic grievance racket.”

balloon: what all deficits or health care bills do under Obama. Alternatives: soar, explode, mushroom, skyrocket.

criticism of attempts to turn religion into law: part of the War on Christianity. Part of the rhetorical fabric of the unending Tea Party Grievance, Hatred and Fear campaign.

devastating critique: any criticism aimed at the Left, or attacking laws or policies antithetical to the Tea Party/GOP. Most recently, any dissent written by Antonin Scalia.

eduacracy: the Higher Ed Thought Police.

empathy-based jurisprudence: Tea Party/GOP shorthand for any Supreme Court that goes against them (see “the rule of law,” below). To base legal findings on moral principles (sentiments,they used to call them) or common sense is dangerous because they were not voiced by the Founders.

Enforcers of Ethnic Authenticity:  the p.c. crowd, the final arbiters of who gets to call who what. aka, “identity-mongers,” the “civility police,” the “tolerance mob,” “militant hyphenated fetishism,” etc.

foment: what Dems do to the public every time they talk about race.

getting money out of politics; Demspeak for suppressing free political expression.

institutional racism: doesn’t exist, despite mass incarceration rates of blacks, attacks on blacks’ voting rights, educational inequality, inadequate housing, etc.

liberty and dignity: what big government takes away from free people everywhere.

(we need) more people pushing the cart than riding in the cart: Bobbie Jindal’s rationale for cuts to Louisiana state Medicaid coverage. The poor as shiftless moochers.

a moral and religious people: what the marriage equality ruling undoes, turning America into mon0thesitic state whose core secular religious beliefs–diversity and redistribution–trump all other religious freedom. This is one of the two main non-sequiturs the Tea Party has applied to the marriage equality ruling: the end of religious liberty and at least the implication that anyone objecting to gay marriage will either be forced to gay marry or criminalized. The slippery slope to Sharia Law.

natural marriage: between a man and a woman; the oppoiste of gay marriage, aka sodomy-based marriage.

racist element:  the classic “bad apple” dodge. As Bill O’Reilly argued, sure, the Confederate flag appeals to some “racist elements,” but it also stands for tradition and honor. Calling racism an “element,” this false equivalency between racism and honor not only undercuts the corrosive moral weight of hate and racism, but also overlooks the fact that Southern “tradition” and “honor” were inherently race-based.  As Jelani Cobb put it, ugly racism and “the sticky moral baggage of bondage” were the “original intent” behind the Confederacy. This romanticization of the Confederacy wants to put slave owners on an equal footing with Civil War enactors, in an attempt to whitewash the original sin of slavery.

retrograde leftism: any positions of Bernie Saunders or Elizabeth Warren. By casting them as the “back to the future” candidates, this framing marginalizes them as throwbacks to the Wobblies or whatever, entirely dismissing the possibility that their political positions are getting traction with tens of millions of living Americans, many of them under thirty.

the rule of law: what is violated every time  Supreme Court decision goes against the Tea Party/GOP. To the right, the “original intent” of the Constitution is transparent and even interpretable. In such a clockwork universe, political laws are as fixed and unchanging as religious laws or natural law.

a secular theology of self-actualization: marriage equality. By this logic, marriage equality is antithetical to free speech and religious liberty because “hedonism”  (a “secular religion) will constitutionally prevail over religious objections.

zealot: anyone talking about race, advocating the banning of the Confederate flag, etc. Zealotry is stigmatized in this usage as something unreasonable and unhinged, but seems perfectly acceptable in defense of American exceptionalism.