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Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, July 8-14, 2016

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above the law: the Clintons. Especially when ‘the law”–that is, the FBI, the Attorney General, Congressional investigations–find no criminal wrongdoing by the Clintons, they are considered guilty. There is no room in this moral universe for innocence.

Amexit: the withdrawal of America from global leadership under President Obama.

animus against police: any criticism of policing practices. This hatred of the police has led to falsehoods about police violence, and made it open season on police officers.

Black Lives Matter: inherently racist and anti-American. According to Rudi Guiliani, parents ought  to  tell their kids to fear black protestors rather than fear the police.

bribes and payoffs: any donation made to the Clinton Foundation. Any contribution, no matter how used or how intended, is thus considered guilty until proven innocent.

chaos: the result of “corrosive rhetoric” (see below). See also “disrupter,” below. Somehow, through the alchemy of rhetoric, Trump can get away with being perceived as a “disrupter” of the status quo, but Dems’ calls for political or social reform inevitably  lead to “chaos”.

civilization vs. chaos: what’s at stake when the police are unfairly criticized in “relentless” attacks. (See  also “corrosive rhetoric,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “animus against police”). Note the false dichotomy thus created: there is no middle ground between accepting police brutality and criticizing it. Any criticism of the police starts you down the moral slippery slope to “chaos” .

corrosive rhetoric: any mention of race or any criticism of the police.

cosmopolitan America: the sneering coastal elites who mock and devalue Flyover America. Donald Trump is the candidate of Flyover America.

disruption: Trump’s brand: the Lord of Misrule. When the Dems talk about expanded environmental regulations, women’s health services (including abortion), police restraint, background checks on gun ownership, family leave, etc–that is, any domestic programs that would disrupt the status quo–they aren’t praised as disrupters, but condemned as being “politically correct.”

Liberal racism: the racially divisive, politically correct rhetoric that is killing people. As explained in The American Spectator:

Liberal dogma requires that no matter what terrorist act or crime is committed the motivation of the perpetrator — if it is a black person, a Muslim, or any other protected minority — cannot be stated truthfully. That rule is obeyed even when it is obvious that the motivation is religion, race hatred, or politics.

Thus this p.c. rhetoric becomes the master trope connecting all news stories over the past eight years:

From Henry Louis Gates’s arrest to five assassinated cops in Dallas is a chain of events caused by eight years of racially divisive liberalism. That liberalism, expressed in politically correct rhetoric, abandonment of the rule and letter of the law, has torn our social contract to shreds. Everything from Hillary’s escape from criminal prosecution to the Dems’ insistence that gun control is the answer to mass murder is traceable to that single cause.

inflammatory rhetoric: any mention of race.

moral condescension: the hallmark of the liberal ruling class: contempt for the lumpen proletariat. Having a moral position at all opposed to Tea Party doctrine makes someone a self-righteous, moralistic hypocrite, just as merely bringing up the subject of race makes one a racist.

political correctness: not being right, but being hypocritical and blindly doctrinaire. Should actually be called lockstep or knee-jerk ideology.

postmodern progressives: moral anarchists, totalitarian to the core. For postmodern progressives, seemingly unobjectionable concepts such as justice, inclusiveness, diversity, and equality are actually barely-disguised wills to power. (see “moral condescension,” above.)

rigged: the only reason Hillary wasn’t indicted is because the liberal elites have “rigged the system” to protect her. There is a sinister media conspiracy to prop up the liberal state, based on its sense of moral superiority and the resultant condescension (see above). Nearly every elected official is part of this “rigged” system–only Donald Trump is telling the truth. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the real rigging: gerrymandering,  restricted voters’ rights laws, bailouts of Wall Street and the big banks–goes on unimpeded and even celebrated.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 29-July 7, 2016

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anti-trade: pro worker. As Paul Krugman argues, this is the the ultimate Trump sleight-of-hand, part of his phony populism:

No matter what we do on trade, America is going to be mainly a service economy for the foreseeable future. If we want to be a middle-class nation, we need policies that give service-sector workers the essentials of a middle-class life. This means guaranteed health insurance — Obamacare brought insurance to 20 million Americans, but Republicans want to repeal it and also take Medicare away from millions. It means the right of workers to organize and bargain for better wages — which all Republicans oppose. It means adequate support in retirement from Social Security — which Democrats want to expand, but Republicans want to cut and privatize.

Is Mr. Trump for any of these things? Not as far as anyone can tell. And it should go without saying that a populist agenda won’t be possible if we’re also pushing through a Trump-style tax plan, which would offer the top 1 percent huge tax cuts and add trillions to the national debt.

Sorry, but adding a bit of China-bashing to a fundamentally anti-labor agenda does no more to make you a friend of workers than eating a taco bowl does to make you a friend of Latinos.

debt: the key to success, according to Trump, the self-styled “Kine of Debt”. Apparently, though, US government debt and trade deficits are not OK, so Trump wants it both ways.

dishonest: what the media is whenever they claim Trump is lying. Thus, by definition, Trump is incapable of lying and the media is incapable of honesty–it’s all part of the “rigged” system.

Freddie-Franny Clintonite crowd: the crony capitalists who get rich by pushing sub-prime loans onto unsuspecting minority borrowers, and then bail each other out when the loans go belly-up. These were also the instigators of the 2008 market crash. To the Tea Party, anyone who advocates non-discriminatory loan practices for minorities falls into this category.

gradualism: Obama’s foreign policy; aka capitulation, disengagement, surrender, appeasement. The opposite of gradual is Trump’s threatened sudden and tumultuous changes to the world order.

pay-for-play: the Clinton way of governing, always maximizing privilege, power, and class.

political correctness run amok: lefty charges of Trump’s racism, sexism or anti-semitism  Even though Trump re-tweets these memes from proto-fascist and white supremacist websites, he’ll take the tweets down when criticized and then take credit for being such a steadfast champions of “the blacks,” the “Jews,” etc. This is a classic rhetorical ploy of innuendo and dog-whistle to his base–it’s all between the lines and has built-in plausible deniability. The fact that it keeps happening though, and that the material is always lifted from these heinous websites and web forums seems like proof that the Trump campaign knows exactly what it’s doing.

puritanical alarmism: any opposition to Trump. It’s called “puritanical” because liberals are characterized as being sanctimonious and hypocritical, pretending as they do to only noble, lofty ideals and censoring Trump for any of his foibles or failures. It’s called “alarmism” because Trump is not nearly the threat to civilization that they make him out to be. This works so well rhetorically because any criticism of Trump is deflected as being “alarmist”. It’s akin to calling Hillary “hysterical” whenever she speaks at all stridently about Trump.

race baiting: bringing up the subject of race, since racism is officially over in the US, according to the Supreme Court in Obergfell. Accusations of racism are the instinctive and cynical Dem response to any Tea Party candidate or policy. This rhetorical ploy turns any race-baiting Tea Partiers into the victim, and astonishingly talks about the GOP/Tea Party as the true home of Blacks and Hispanics, even though the party is against affirmative action, does everything it can to suppress minority voting rights, defends mass imprisonment of minorities and police violence against minorities. tries to get every social safety net program whenever possible, supports elitist white charter schools, etc. Here’s a typical counter-intuitive rant that turns the world upside down:

For too many years Republicans have acted helpless in the face of Democrats scapegoating us as racist.  Because we are then rejected by blacks, we allow Dems to claim that we are against blacks.  In reality, it is our values and our policies that would benefit blacks, while Democrat policies destroy them.  Blacks who join Republican or Tea Party ranks are welcomed with almost delirious enthusiasm.  We would love blacks to join us in our defense of freedom and prosperity for all, but scapegoating works.  We have let ourselves be marginalized as racists.

reckless: crooked Hillary has also become reckless Hillary, lacking the judgement to be President. Thus the Clinton Derangement Syndrome makes yet another pivot, as explained in the Financial Times:

Clinton scandals never end. They continue long after their purported original sin is forgotten and multiple investigations prove that there was nothing much there to begin with. We are still talking about the Vince Foster scandal, the allegation that the Clintons murdered their aide in 1993. That scandal is now into a third decade of groundless innuendo.

The email inquiry is a perfect example of this scandal-industrial complex and its capacity for perpetual motion.

resilience: deregulation, particularly in the financial sector. A resilient, robust economy releases the animal spirits, the unseen hand of the market–constraints removed, Atlas Unchained!

rights: constitutional rights, not human rights. Constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms, or the right to do whatever you want in the name of your religion,  are sacred, whereas human rights, like the right to health care, or the right to be free from discrimination, are not.

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 22-27, 2016

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affirmative action: the Dems’ sordid business of sorting by race. Shame on them for dividing rather than uniting America. Note that the idealistic goal of achieving equal opportunity has been turned on its head by this rhetorical sleight-of-hand , so that idealism becomes cynical and actually sordid–meaning dirty, corrupt, and shameful. What is an attempt to address and counter the deep historical roots of racism and segregation is instead likened to a cynical con game. Counter to GOP claims that racism is over in America, the need for affirmative action remains as great today as it was 60 years ago. Yet the GOP/Tea Party continues to try to whitewash and oversimplify the past, present and future of race relations in America.

constitutional conservatism: bedrock American values of individual liberty, limited government, and unregulated free markets. Tea Party nostalgia for a lost utopia that never existed.

ethnic identity: tribalism that is unacceptable in a pluralistic society. If identity is your identity, then your primary identity better be American. America First!

green crony capitalism: taxpayer subsidies for smug, holier-than-thou, super-elite climate alarmists

in some sense: Trump’s “reprehensible” rhetoric that really isn’t so bad, and often points to deeper truths. Tea Partiers often frame their defense of Trump in terms of “I don’t agree with how he says things,” or “I don‘t agree with everything he says,” when they actually, sometime secretly, love how he says things and agree with everything he says. So they’ll say, “in some sense,” or “in some ways” what he says is unacceptable, but the “sense” or “ways” they’re staking moral claims to are actually antithetical to their sense of free speech–they just can’t quite bring themselves to be as honest as Trump.

jump-starting the economy: always tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, never stimulus packages. Other euphemisms for tax cuts for the rich include “tax sanity,” “fairness” and “simplicity”. When these terms are used by the Tea Party/GOP, the only “simplicity” they’re talking about is more money in the pockets of the wealthy, and the only “fairness” is based on the idea that the rich should be left on their own to make as much money as possible since they’ve “earned” it. This idea of “fairness” strips away the moral notion of “fair” as being just and equitable, leaving only the unfettered, absolutist playground bullying idea of “fairness” as meaning being able to do whatever you want to .

morally distasteful: what the Dems consider anything morally necessary, especially in regards to domestic and national security  or immigration reform.

politicized cultural liberalism: gun control, abortion, immigration. Rank partisanship masquerading as public policy.

racial profiling: common sense.

religious liberty: church-sanctioned bigotry.

Trumpism: Created by the hyper-partisan,  unconstitutional overreach of Barack Obama.

ungracious: any immigrant who complains about or criticizes America, especially those who criticize job creators and great patriots such as Donald Trump.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 9-21, 2016

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divorced from reality: Obama and Clinton, especially in their failure to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism”. “Reality” in this case is solely defined by the Tea Party/GOP, so any position antithetical to theirs is “divorced”–that is estranged–from reality.

global warming: an environmental scare campaign.

government tribunal: any rubber-stamping federal agency regime which holds a Sword of Damocles over capitalism, free enterprise and individual rights.

guilty until proven innocent: Hillary Clinton, Muslims.

multiculturalism: a twisted ideology, a sickness, a form of mass delusion, leading to the acceptance of terrorism.

Muslims: blood-cult monsters; the Aztecs of the Internet.

orthodoxy: any politically-correct Dem position, such as “climate change”, inequality, “the GOP war against women”, etc. These are all fictions,  confected for maximum political effect, full of empty calories, false promises, and faulty premises.

public sector: the chief role of the public sector is to produce wealth for the private sector. This is best done by lowering taxes, ending government regulation, and ending judicial interference in the private sector (aka, “tort reform”). To the Dems, the only role of the private sector is to produce wealth for the public sector.

rammed through (or snuck by): what the Dems have to do to win court decisions–either stack the courts or use subterfuge to fool gullible or inattentive judges.

real Americans: Trump and Romney supporters. Romney’s 47% aren’t genuine Americans, but social parasites not worthy of full citizenship.

there’s something going on: ban Muslims, period. Somebody needs to look into this.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, May 29-June 8, 2016

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bipartisanship: when Obama agrees with the Tea Party. (see “failure,” below)

civilizational advantages: Europe over the Middle East; the US over everyone else;

failure: Obama’s intransigent partisanship with Congress that led to his inability to get any GOP support, as argued by Mitch McConnell. In a hilarious WJS op-ed, McConnell shamelessly insists that the Senate is supposed to be bipartisan,  somehow overlooking his thousands of obstructionist statements, such as this 2010 reveal:

It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”

Mr. McConnell said the unity was essential in dealing with Democrats on “things like the budget, national security and then ultimately, obviously, health care.

hate group: any organized effort to oppose Trump.

judicial activist: any federal judge who rules against the Tea Party or GOP policies and principles.  (see “settled law,” below).

obstacles to investment: taxes and regulations, aka, “morasses”. Thus, establishing taxes and regulations–the two chief functions of government–puts a finger on the rhetorical scale from the beginning. If taxes were instead characterized as obligations or opportunities or investments in the future, the GOP would lose its inherent rhetorical edge in economic policy framing.

position of trust: something HRC will never be in, no matter whether she is ever charged with a crime or indicted. Although her “crookedness” is an allegation, based on other allegations, she has somehow  forfeited trust in a way that Donald Trump never has, despite changing his mind and contradicting himself on every major issue.

purposely negative reporting: false reporting. Any attack on Trump is by definition a horrible “hit job”, a piece of “sleaze”, a personal attack that should be illegal and subject to huge fines. Trump thus takes a page from the fascist playbook, currently being ruthlessly enacted by Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, who has charged or jailed political opponents, journalists, civic society groups, and others, characterizing them as terrorists:

If the H.D.P. has dropped all caution, so has Erdogan. The man who once held back Turkey’s trigger-happy security services has now given them carte blanche. “Turkey has no Kurdish problem, but a terror problem,” he said in January. “No one should try to palm it off on us as a Kurdish problem.” He later called for members of Parliment to be stripped of their immunity, so H.D.P. leaders could be prosecuted and jailed as terrorists, and parliamentary debates devolved into mass fistfights. In mid-May, the Parliament passed the immunity-lifting measure, an act that is likely to push more Kurds toward militancy.

At the same time, Erdogan has led a crackdown on the press, with the state jailing critical journalists and academics en masse and closing down opposition outlets; scarcely any remain. He has urged Parliament to “redefine” terrorism in a way that is ominously broad. “The fact that their title is lawmaker, academic, writer, journalist or head of a civil society group doesn’t change the fact that that individual is a terrorist,” he said in March. Even in Erdogan’s own party, total loyalty to the president has become a condition of survival. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, long viewed as a flunky, was forced out unceremoniously in early May after some mild gestures of difference with Erdogan, including on the Kurdish issue; he had hinted at a return to peace talks. “The one who talks about peace in wartime is as much a traitor as the one who talks about war in peacetime,” wrote an Erdogan ally, in an anonymous denunciation of Davutoglu posted on a blog on May 1.

This all-or-nothing strategy seems guaranteed to return Turkey to the days when the Kurds were forced to choose between the P.K.K. and the state. If that happens, many who are now critical of the P.K.K.’s violence and hungry for an alternative will fall in line behind Ocalan’s minions. Turkey’s compliant mainstream media, meanwhile, have done their part to whip up a nationalist frenzy. Turn on a TV anywhere in Turkey, and you will see frequent footage of soldiers’ funerals, but no mention of civilian casualties or the hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes.

This reads like a preview of the attack on free speech that would be the hallmark of a Trump Presidency.

rule of law: what the Dems call racism.

 

settled law: any standing judicial policy or precedent that the Tea Party agrees with. Everything else is “judicial activism”. (see above)

victims: in the case of LGBT bathroom use, the victims are little girls who will have to suffer degenerate trannies  exposing themselves in the girl’s bathroom. Victims and victimizers are thus intentionally conflated, as with Jim Crow laws, which ostensibly were designed to protect white women from black rapists. These purported forms of violence are hypothetical only, much like so-called voter fraud.

May 3-21

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$7.50-an-hour wage: the first rung on the ladder of opportunity. No matter that the other rungs are cut off or inaccessible.

compromise: defeat

ever-expanding: the federal bureaucracy, by definition.

eye-rolling: any Hillary answer, usually accenting the lie she’s telling,and often in the form of a screamed or hysterical answer.

high value college education: anything that translates into good job prospects. Liberal arts students are stuck with “high price” rather than “high value” educations. Critical inquiry, historical knowledge, and even basic cultural literacy are all discounted in this Gradgrindian calculus that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

pragmatist: what Donald Trump will morph into now that he has the GOP nomination secured.  This is really rhetorical shorthand for him disowning or “forgetting” all of the outrageous, divisive  campaign promises that created his electoral momentum.

raid: any government regulation of business, especially consumer protection regulation, which amounts to a “shakedown” of US businesses, and is a form of liberal racketeering.

supply-side structural reforms: radical tax reform and pro-competition regulatory reform. This is an unnecessarily abstruse way of stating the core Tea Party/GOP principles of cut ting taxes and ending government regulation.

 

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 21-30, 2016

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the climate police: anyone concerned about the environment, climate change, global warming, etc. Rhetorically hints that any environmental regulatory action is authoritarian at best, and a form of schoolmarm scolding and social control. These police are related to the “pc police.”

the collective: the ultimate leftist cult, in which individual rights and matters of conscience are always subordinated to the authority of the collective.

equal protection under the law: leftist ideology

Hillary-as-criminal: a given. Here’s what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”:

Guilt and innocence do not determine judgment, but rather judgment determines all, including the definition of guilt.–Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno

Leviathan: the federal government.

market uncertainty: the real culprit of the 2008 financial meltdown, caused by government inconsistency, regulatory excess, and pressure to issue sub-prime loans to unqualified minority borrowers. Perfect certainty would cause perfect markets.

raid: government policing or regulatory actions, especially those that affect consumers and businesses.

regrettable infelicities: any of the Donald’s statements that provoke outrage in the liberal Democrats. Aka, “lapses of taste and judgment.”

resentment: the rhetorical heart of Trumpism: economic resentment, immigration resentment, racial resentment, gender resentment.

trends: what pass for principles among Dems. Always shifting and subject to change, depending on what’s trending or politically correct at the time. Examples include playing “the woman card” and identity politics, climate change, and charges of p0lice violence. None of these rest on a principled foundation: gender identity politics for its own sake is pandering; climate change is a man=made fiction, and “police violence” is an urban myth.

“unfair” and “abusive”: government-speak for market-driven business practices.

“you can’t say that about a woman”: Trump’s attack on political correctness that he uses as ironic justification whenever he calls women screamers, “disgusting”, ugly, etc.

 

Glossary: Key memes, counterfactuals, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 13-18, 2016

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bungling government: actually a redundancy, since government is the enemy because it is by definition incompetent, corrupt, technocratic, and self-serving–and robs us of our liberty. Anything the public sector can do private individuals can do better. The key rhetorical ploy here is depriving the government of the funding it needs to fully function, then blaming it for being dysfunctional.

crony capitalism: the Dem way of inside-the-Beltway business, always  catering to “special interests,” always to be denounced. Of course, when the Tea Party caters to narrow interests, it’s called “setting the market free”.

economic empowerment: bottom-up reform liberating consumers, freeing up the market, ending government regulation–all leading to unlimited growth and prosperity. This eternal and infernal delusion of endless growth  (always in the name of “efficiency”) and unregulated wealth creation is the promise of Trumpism and the Tea Party. Never mind that, in the words of Tony Judt in Ill Fares the Land,“unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn to the state again for rescue.”

egging on racial violence: mentioning race as a factor in police shootings of minorities, etc. Actually, mentioning race at all.

government extortion of bank assets: Dodd-Frank. Banks were actually the scapegoats of the financial crisis, not the villains. After all, it was the mission of the  big banks to guarantee safety and soundness, and the federal regulators who forced them to make reckless sub-prime loans.

hard choices: to the Tea Party, rationales for inflicting pain on others, especially the poor.

homeowners: the sub-prime deadbeat minorities, propped up by government regulators,   who were the real real villains of the financial crisis.

incentives, effort, and reward: the Tea Party promise of prosperity and upward mobility through drastic cuts in public services. The circular argument of Dickensian Social Darwinism at work: the prosperous are prosperous because they deserve it. The poor are poor also because they deserve it because of laziness or bad character.

independent advance of technology: how the private sector is going to save the planet from climate change over the next century. No government regulators, policies or subsidies required if you just believe in the “unseen hand” of human ingenuity!

Los Angeles and San Francisco: liberal urban seas of smug yuppie self-absorption.

malign reporting: any lamestream media reports that accurately spell out the term of religious liberty (aka “bathroom’) laws. It’s always called “unfair” when reporters talk about the exclusionary, discriminatory, and biased aspects and outcomes of these laws.

political dysfunction: the current political climate, caused by Dem intransigence and a doctrinaire socialism that Americans don’t want.  Never mind that the current political dysfunction has been caused by the GOP/Tea Party vow to stymie Obama, and their intransigent clinging to doctrines of low taxes, limited government, unfettered markets, and the end of the welfare state.

self interest: always furthered by markets and economic efficiencies. Calls for “the common good” or “collective actions” actually hinder everyone’s self interest, which is dependent on the “invisible hand” of the market.

taxes: uncompensated income loss. Forget ideas of the “collective good,” “public sector,” or “civil society.” 

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, April 5-12, 2016

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Clinton Foundation: the Brazilianization of US politics.

humiliation: A bedrock Trumpian narrative, invoking outrage, victimhood,  and revenge . This narrative of retaliation frames our refusal to exert force abroad as a pathological weakness,   and is fueled by the myth of American Exceptionalism to generate and inform a seething  emotional and philosophical seedbed of violence and retaliation. Singling out “the bad guys” (Mexicans, Muslims, etc.)  assigns blame for feelings of humiliation, vulnerability, and powerlessness. Trump Nation serves as both an audience and a humiliated protagonist who will do anything to reclaim agency and sovereignty. After all, the word humiliation’s Greek root has to do with dirt, subordination, a putting down, hierarchies–the very opposite rhetorical schema  as that of American Exceptionalism. 

This argument that humiliation lies at the roots of fascism was summed up nicely in 1995 by Umberto Eco, who argued that  fascists are a cult of “action for action’s sake,” where “thinking is a form of emasculation”; an intolerance of “analytical criticism,” where disagreement is condemned; a profound “fear of difference,” where leaders appeal against “intruders”; appeals to individual and social frustration and specifically a “frustrated middle class” suffering from “feelings of political humiliation and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups”; a nationalist identity set against internal and external enemies (an “obsession with a plot”); a feeling of humiliation by the “ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies”; a “popular elitism” where “every citizen belongs to the best people of the world” and underscored by contempt for the weak; and a celebration of aggressive (and often violent) masculinity.

legal thieves: government officials. Almost all taxation is over-taxation.

living Constitution: the Lib Dem rationale for limiting the rights of citizens and Congress through judges legislating from the bench.

moral relativism: the seeds of Al Qaeda and ISIS. Rooted in the moral nihilism of the Lib Dems.

“of course”, “no one is saying,” etc: The standard qualifier, designed to counter liberal charges of racism, sexism, etc.  This rhetorical ploy is a smokescreen designed to shift the conversation and reassure the faithful, as Fred Clark argues in his Slactivism blog:

The substance of the Standard Answer comes last because the substantial aspect — punish doctors, not women — isn’t coherent enough to bear the weight of a satisfactory answer. The load-bearing work is done prior to that insubstantial substance. The key component is the dismissive tone — all that “of course” and “no one is saying …” business that denies the legitimacy of the question and thus denies that any response needs to be substantial or logical or coherent. The boldness of this evasion is softened and diffused by the move from singular to plural and from the particular to a vague, undifferentiated “we.”

The Standard Answer, in other words, avoids engaging the question as “What do I think” by shifting the response to “What we say/think/believe is …” This may seem unimportant to the questioner, but it is vitally important to the answerer because, again, this is the primary function of the Standard Answer: reassuring oneself that an answer exists and that “we” have one, and that therefore I do not need to worry about it any further.

religious freedom:  The freedom to exercise your faith-based conscience, even if it means curtailing the freedom of others. The logic of this claim of “freedom” invariably leads to protecting bigots.

supple economy: one with low taxes and little or no regulation. A supple economy works best with a supine government. A well-functioning capitalist system relies on prices for guidance, not rules.

urban school children: victims of the pathology of black culture: absent fathers, drug addiction, hip-hop, etc. Notice how this meme pathologizes all black youth, who already face the high likelihood of prison, police stops, etc.