Category Archives: glossary

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms, fake outrages, and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, October 8-19, 2015

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beating up: regulating (the drug companies, the banks, etc.)

big government: any government.

cost-benefit tradeoffs: any regulation that incurs any costs nullifies its supposed benefits. This analysis always overestimates the costs and understates or underestimates or ignores the benefits. For example, clean air is not a calculable benefit.

culture-war leftists: any Dem who wants to play the race card, the war-on-women card, the gun control etc. Any issue that threatens the Tea Party is called part of “the culture war,” and thus intended to be “taken off the table.”

economic know- nothings: anyone who wants to regulate the free market, the banks, the insurance companies, Big Pharm, etc. Also, anyone who wants to raise taxes on the rich.

House leader: a Speaker who takes directions from the Freedom Caucus. More of a follower than a leader.

inequality: solely caused by the successes of our millionaires and billionaires. A temporary condition caused by hard work and entrepreneurial guile. Anyone shouting “inequality” simply disrespects success.

Pander bears: Dems offering the poor “free stuff”.

personal responsibility: blaming the government. The more vociferously someone goes on about “personal responsibility,” the more that obsessively that person blames government for all the country’s woes.

Presidential veto: a frustration

the rich: the middle class–the ones Dems really want to tax.

utopianism:  any species of idealism. Since inequality, poverty, war, and guns will never go away, attempts to regulate them or ameliorate their impact are delusional and naive.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, October 2-6, 2015

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America the Horrible:  the way that Obama wants the rest of the world to view America; started with his “apology tour.”

containment: short of a magical thinking solution of annihilation, the default Tea Party strategy for dealing with the  Iranians, Russians, Chinese, ISIS, etc. As our disastrous wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have proven, containment is exactly what you are guaranteed not to get with a strategy of belligerent intervention or occupation. Generally, it can be said that Republicans want to contain an increasingly complex, porous, globalized world, and so their foreign policy is stuck in a rigid Cold War mentality. Like a hammer, it thinks everything that it sees is a nail to be pounded back into its rightful place.

human tragedy: a magic incantation designed to ward off any government action proposed as a response to any horrific event or act. Evil exists in every human heart, and government only encourages more evil. The prime example of this is gun control legislation proposed in the face of school shootings. Any attempt to regulate gun sales is a fairy tale.

Iraqi stabilization: was “just around the corner” before Obama halted it. In actuality, this is every bit as much of a chimera as our ever-elusive victory in Vietnam, our defeating the Taliban, “Syrian moderates”, or the chances of Iran becoming a secular open society.

mental illness: another magic incantation used to ward off any gun control legislation. Never mentioned again after the latest gun control furor dies down.

national interest: national ego, as pointed out by Eugene Robinson.

radical turn: any Dem leftward policy proposal. Anything less than Tea Party doctrine.

the rest of us: Republican voters. Aka, “the silent majority,” “the real Americans,” “the average Joe,” etc. Anyone who doesn’t vote for the Tea Party is a member of the “elite,” despite the fact that the majority of voters in the past two presidential and congressional elections have voted Democratic. Apparently, by this Yogi Berra logic, an elite can paradoxically also be a majority. Also, presumably, this “rest of us” group would prefer as little government as possible.

social ills: the fictional bogeyman that causes all of America’s problems,  in the minds of all Dems.

stuff happens: The Jeb Bush approach to school shootings. Why not extend this callous and calculated blanket amnesty to epidemics, arson, or unsafe products?

taking personal rights away from the rest of us: the harm that government does because any government regulatory act  “violates our liberty.”  This is especially true with gun control.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Sept 21-Oct 1, 2015

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conscience rights: any moral position a Tea Partier holds that gives them an exemption from following the law.

crackpot attitudes: Pope Francis’s positions that the Tea Party disagrees with. (See also “leave it to the scientists,” below).

free stuff: any form of government safety-net assistance. While both Romney and Bush have used this Gradgrindian dog-whistle term, neither specifies whether it refers to food, clothing, rent, heat or health care, making it sound less draconian, as if all they are denying the poor are free samples. The rhetorical effect is to imply that the poor are “unfit for democracy.” (see below)

hack ramble: any Hillary speech.

inefficient: Anyone getting government aid (aka,”free stuff). Efficiency is the cardinal operating principle of an unfettered free market.

infanticide: any abortion

leave it to the scientists: the Grand Old Tea Party’s refrain to any of Pope Francis’s homilies about climate change. Of course, as soon as the Pope left the US, they reverted to their habitual mode of constant attack of all and any climate change advocate who cites “the science.”

moralizing: whenever the Pope takes a moral position that the Grand Old Tea Party opposes.  When they support his position, as in the case of abortion and birth control, they call him a moral touchstone, not a “moralizer” issuing “broadsides.”. Aka, “politicizing”. (see “crackpot attitudes,” above)

nice talk: any Obama admin attempt at foreign policy accommodation, negotiation, or moderation. Aka, “singing Kumbaya”.

politicization: what the Pope does when he talks about climate change. (See “Leaving it up to the scientists,” above). Somehow, though, when Republicans talk about Planned Parenthood, Benghazi, or gun control, they do not see themselves as “politicizing” such issues.

small government: the end of the regulatory and welfare state.

social justice: the root of all corruption, inequality, and poverty. The less of an emphasis there is on social justice, redistributionism, and a “cooperative” rather than a competitive economy, the greater the prosperity. Government is, after all, the most impovershing force of all.

unfit for democracy: anyone who voted for Obama. More specifically, refers to anyone getting “free stuff”–see above.

voting: the ultimate consumer approach to governing, Note that this concept does not include any moral obligation whatsoever. In this sense it is the opposite of citizenship, which entails deciding on who gets what, how tax money gets spent, social and foreign policy, etc. To just be courted as a voter without any sense of civic responsibility is akin to having your religiosity reduced to how much you tithe.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, August 29-Sept. 7, 2015

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“can’t do-ism”: the Obama administration’s reflexive exculpatory refrain about why it can’t stop illegal immigration, grow the economy, make America energy-independent, defeat ISIS, create prosperity for the middle class, get the poor off welfare, etc. This “pervasive despondency and fear” is, according to Stephen Moore, the result of Obama’s ineptitude, not wider and deeper social, political and economic forces.

Note that this rhetorical move, similar to the “legal distinctions” one below, is actually a huge misdirection, a classic evasion by non-sequitur or stripping away all context. . Never mind that almost all of these conditions were created by the Bush administration, that no other country in the world economy has recovered from the Great Recession more thoroughly and enduringly than the US, that austerity has failed as an economic fix in Europe. Ignoring these mitigating circumstances is the only way they can get away with the standard litany of Tea party “fixes,” the Christmas list they’ve been peddling for the last 50 years: lower taxes, less regulation, market-driven, privatized health care, the end of the social safety net, etc. No matter how they couch their critique of the Dem scapegoat of the moment, be it Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, the Clintons, Gore or Kerry–it always comes down to the same solutions, even when these solutions are tried and fail disastrously.

chokehold: any Obama administration regulatory policy or practice. For example, the EPA is said to have  a “chokehold” over the economy.

demeaning: any Dem policy trying to maintain expanded voting rights. Limiting voting as much as possible through voter i.d. laws, shortened polling windows, registration restrictions, etc., is thus seen as “borderline racist” because it assumes that the disadvantaged black voters are too stupid or lazy to figure out how to vote. Thus, by GOP logic, Dems demean blacks by fighting for their rights.

difference happens:  An argument by non-sequitur: the argument against the “disparate impact” theory, claims that, just as some continents have deeper rivers than others, so too will differences emerge among different races and genders, like a force of nature. Never mind the substantive arguments that politics, economics and culture have shaped those outcomes and can be malleable, this “difference happens” argument is the ultimate complacent haven of the privileged–a form of Social Darwinism.

diversity: something to be overcome.

epidemic: “inordinate black illegitimacy, crime, drug use, rap vulgarity, social service dependence, and the romance of the violent cult of the male”.

Astonishingly enough, this patronizing caricature of Black culture comes from Tea Partiers trying to argue that the GOP will do more for the Blacks than the Dems.

facts vs. rhetoric: all Tea Party arguments are fact-based, whereas Dem arguments are dismissed as sheer “rhetoric”–concocted and calculated language aiming to deceive in order to persuade.

Never mind that the Tea Party’s so-called “facts” themselves are concocted, partial and designed to deceive. This false dichotomy is the most subversive of all because of its naive assumption that language is merely a reflection of reality and not a generator of realities.

“I’m not saying…”: classic rhetorical tactic: villification by innuendo rather than direct assertion. So, for example, you say, “I’m not calling you a liar, but the truth isn’t be told here.” A current example from Matthew Continneti at The National Review:

I am not saying that the president or the Democratic party is anti-American in ideology or rhetoric or intent. What I am saying is that the net effect of President Obama’s actions has been to legitimize, strengthen, and embolden nations whose anti-Americanism is public and vicious and all too serious.

Revealingly, even the article’s own title calls Obama an “anti-American President.”

legal distinctions:  as in the phrase, “obviously, there are legal distinctions,” as used in The Federalist.

This weasel phrase is usually used to try and subordinate, trivialize or slip past a devastating difference that exposes the fundamental duplicity of your argument. In this case, author David Harsanyi is attempting to make a moral equivalence between Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis refusing to follow the law and Obama using executive orders or federal regulations to circumvent GOP Congressional opposition to nearly all of his policies. Even though executive orders and regulatory authority are legal, and have been used by all past presidents, Harsanyi nonetheless accuses them of “contempt of the rule of law.” In true Rovian fashion, the very crime Davis is jailed for–“contempt for the rule of law” is actually being attributed to the Dems. Masterful bait-and-switch, using a false equivalency. A similar non-sequitur is the argument against the disparate outcome theory, that, just as some continents have deeper rivers than others, so too will differences emerge between people. Difference happens, in other words. Never mind the substantive arguments that politics, economics and culture have shaped those outcomes and can be malleable, this “difference happens” argument is the ultimate complacent haven of the privileged–a form of Social Darwinism. Another variation on this theme is to dismiss Davis’s overt breaking of the law with the “entrenched criminality” of the Obama administration, especially the IRS, Justice Department, Hillary’s e-mail criminality, etc.

martyr: any Tea Partier jailed for not following the law. Similarly-jailed Dems are called “scofflaws” or criminals.

political stunt: any Obama policy issue or declaration. Aka, gimmick, ploy, cave-in, fiat.

praetorian defenders: the lapdog mainstream media that protects Hillary from criminal indictment by not reporting the “facts” of such “scandals” as Benghazi and the e-mail server. Like Whitewater, Travelgate and Vince Foster’s suicide, these so-called “scandals” will never go away in the minds of the Tea Party.

shackling: any Obama regulatory policy or action. In effect, any federal oversight does nothing but constrain the natural animal spirits of capitalism and stymie the natural freedom that is the birthright of all “original” Americans.

unfeeling opportunist: anyone advocating immigration reform or a “path to citizenship.” The assumption is that such liberals only care about immigrant and minority votes and not about the minorities themselves. Just as anyone advocating for racial justice is a “racist chauvinist,” and anyone calling for progressive social change is a “political manipulator.” Ultimately, the meme is that all so-called liberal “compassion” is a fraudulent cover for opportunism.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, August 22-28, 2015

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affirmative action President: any woman or person of color elected President. Always elected by “victim groups.” After all, America belongs to the white man.

all-of-the-above: going all-in with every possible aggression (boycotts, weapon systems and missile shields, airstrikes, etc.) when it comes to dealing with Putin or the Iranians, In regards to energy policy, all forms of fossil fuel extraction (fracking, coal, etc)–or even nuclear power. When you’re not in power, it’s easy to say “let’s try everything,” as if discriminating among them or facing nuances, blowback etc. is too difficult.

ashamed to be Americans: Obama supporters. This dog-whistle phrase manages to combine nativism, racism, xenophobia, and aggressive militarism.

Citizens United: one dollar, one vote. The old promise of “one man, one vote” has been eclipsed as, on the one hand, billionaires now buy votes and spread hysteria in bulk via attack ads, and, on the other hand, voting rights are consistently diminished by new state laws and restrictions on early voting, voting registration, voter i.d., etc. These voting restrictions have been greatly enhanced by Citizens United because voting is now politicized, and money trumps any fundamental human right to vote.

European future: the worst possible outcome for America: socialism, progressivism, strict environmental and civil rights laws, single-payer health care, etc.

“fairness”: always in scare quotes, connoting what a contrived, phony issue inequality is. At the heart of the “equal opportunity” vs “equal outcome” dichotomy.

honor and dignity: what Black folks really want, according to Ben Carson. Not any guv’ment handouts or entitlements. All federal support for the poor just extends their victimhood. Social services and charities only create shame and a loss of character and any self-reliance. Note that this rhetorical shift changes the script from race to morality, which itself is seen as antiseptically “raceless.”

lavish: what  Obama does when he offers favors or a White House dinner. For instance, he will “lavish” the Chinese leadership with a State dinner.

mob of supporters: any Hillary supporters, always characterized as a nefarious “mob”–that is, conspiratorial, single-minded in their fanaticism (and otherwise mindless), and worked into a frenzy by  a manipulative leader.

on-your-knees pilgrimage: any visit by Obama or senior administration officials to any nation that does not kowtow to America, including, but not limited to, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and France. Any Presidential concession is also considered a surrender. Obama’s non-stop “apology tour” has of course has surrendered almost all America’s global influence and power, lost at least two wars, etc.

original US citizens: white folks, especially nativists of European ancestry.

purveyors of hatred: people who insist on talking about race.

religious liberty: denying service to someone else, in the name of God.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, Aug 5-20, 2015

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character assassination: any Dem attack on Tea Party candidates.

clearly designed: the real intent of Tea Party policies, not what the Dems claim to be GOP motivation. For example, voting restrictions are “clearly designed”  to “protect the integrity of the electoral system,” and not in any way designed to suppress minority voters. In this case, “clearly” is a term of coercion.

crony capitalism: any Dem spending. When Tea Partiers spend money, it’s in the name of “the public good,” “fiscal responsibility” or “market forces.”  As the Washington Post puts it,

It has become fashionable lately for conservatives to decry “crony capitalism,” which involves well-connected corporations and rich people using their influence to milk the government for their own benefit. Even the Koch brothers talk about ending welfare for the wealthy, so firmly committed are they to the purity of market forces. But it turns out that Koch Industries benefits from hundreds of millions of dollars in government largesse, like so many other corporations. As Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute explains (in the National Review!), most of the Republican presidential candidates say they oppose crony capitalism despite long records of supporting it in various forms.

What do we learn from all this?

It’s another reminder that the principles of small government and fiscal responsibility that conservative politicians like Walker pledge their fealty to are highly contingent on who’s benefiting and who’s being hurt.

draconian: any Obama admin environmental regulation.

gutter ad hominem: any Dem attack on a Tea party candidate.

ladling: any federal funding. Money flows from the federal bureaucracy like gravy. Sometimes this ladle is referred to as “truckloads of money.”

political pawns: Hillary supporters.

political correctness: common decency

rambling: any Obama speech that connects two or more ideas. aka, “tendentious.”

regulatory overkill: any federal regulation, especially any from the EPA.

special interest groups: all blacks and Hispanics,  when it comes to issues surrounding civil rights, voting rights,police brutality, mass incarceration, etc.,

taking sides:  criticizing any Tea Party policy or position. Since there can’t be any objective standards for decisive evidence or arguments on any given issue, every Dem argument or point of view is by definition one-sided and distorted.

Washington elites: any influential Dem policy makers.

Glossary: Key memes, dog-whistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, July 26-Aug 4, 2015

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arcane disputes: arguments over voting rights restrictions such as voter I.D., shortened voting windows, etc. Part of the phony War on Voting campaign.

bad guys: any nation opposed to American exceptionalism or Tea Party foreign policy. (See “pariah,” below, for the opposite conceit: that Obama and Kerry have turned the US into a “bad guy.”)

cooking the books: any data supporting the notion of climate change.

desensitization: any pro-choice position

income inequality: caused by immigrants taking jobs from natural-born Americans, according to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.

minimum wage laws: disguised welfare benefits

pariah: what the Iran deal has turned the US into.

putsch: any diktat from the White House.  Every executive order is seen as a direct threat to democratic rule; the Obama Presidency is lawless, Obama is Nero, etc.

sensible regulation: when it comes to abortion, a near universal ban

unconstitutional: any Obama executive order.

winning: the sole objective of US foreign policy: victory over the “bad guys,” at any price. No shades of gray, no negotiations, no compromises. Mistakes football for war. When people say that football is “total war,”

Glossary: Key memes, dogwhistles, canards, euphemisms and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 24-28, 2015

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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.

Glossary: Key memes, dogwhistles, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 17-23, 2015

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All men are created equal: the Tea Party wants this to mean that everyone has a shot at the American Dream (see below), so the rich should have lower tax rates to allow income to magically “trickle down.” The phrase’s original intent, however, had more to do with equal political opportunity, which of course is not widely distributed in America due to racial and class divisions.

The  American Dream: Tea Party/GOP  myth of upward mobility, probably the biggest lie ever. Ever-ready rationale for Social Darwinism.

grifters: anyone working for the Clinton Foundation or on Hillary’s campaign staff. Aka, “political operatives” or “grandees.”

hangers-on: anyone attending the Charleston funerals or voicing support for calls of racial justice or gun control. Aka, opportunists, easy riders, exploiters, the mob, interlopers, and the Deadheads of racial grievance.

overclass: Obama administration officials or any Dem political strategists, all of whom consider themselves vastly superior to Tea Partiers.  Aka, “grandees.”

playing politics: any time Obama comments on public policy, especially when it comes to guns, race, climate change, or financial reform.

quasi-Marxism: the hidden agenda of all Dem policies. As explicated in the National Review, this Dem pathology/arrogance/naivete assumes that:

human nature is infinitely malleable, that power dynamics can explain all undesirable human interactions, and that re-education can serve not only to change society for the better but to wipe out all instances of immorality or law-breaking

This cartoon version of liberalism reduces it to a naive belief in the perfectibility of human nature, a belief that ultimately is “suicidal.” This Tea Party “law of nature” philosophy, based on conflict and hierarchy, views all rational attempts to reconstruct or reform society as doomed. Thus the very notion of Progressivism is delusional.
racism: A “leftist construct.” This is an insidiious conflating of the idea of race as a social construct–a word-made world–into charges of racism as leftist propaganda, rendering any moral claims as nothing more self-serving fictionalizing.
redistribution: another of those master-tropes (such as The American Dream (see above) that has become the oppose

stigmatization of normalcy: the subversive Dem master-strategy. The Tea Party narrative here is that “normal” American values are being marginalized by the liberal media and an incessant Dem campaign to make “normal” seem racist, sexist, or selfish. This entire meme harkens back to the hippies vs. squares culture wars of the Sixties.

taking over our country: migrants, underclass “grifters,” the “entitled,”and the politically correct. Having “lost” the country, the question is whether to try to “take it back” or just preserve enclaves and stay separate.

transgenderism: the normalization of insanity.

the Unabomber manifesto: the Pope’s encyclical about climate change and other self-destructive human activities.

the wrong time: it’s ” always the wrong time ” for a conversation about race, etc

Glossary: an anatomy of key memes, dog-whistles, canards, shibboleths and obsessions in the Wall Street Journal and other GOP language factories, June 11-16, 2015

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agenda-driven:  any Dem policy or position. Since liberals are incapable of moral positions because everything is a cynical calculation, they are always working their agenda. So any Dem issues–police brutality, racism, voting rights, climate change, what have you–are “phony” and don’t even really exist.

destructive: any Dem policy. Down is up and every well-intentioned public policy actually leads to its opposite, as recently illustrated in the National Review:

The policies she listed are, in the main, destructive ones. There is little evidence that the federal government can improve children’s futures through universal preschool. A big increase in the minimum wage is likely to suppress job growth. Discrimination by employers is not the major cause of the pay gap between men and women, and thus policing that discrimination more will not do much to shrink the gap. Mandatory paid leave may worsen employment prospects for women. Further weakening immigration enforcement will inflame social tensions while cutting the wages of the working poor. Judging from the premium hikes insurers are requesting, maintaining Obamacare probably means watching its already unsatisfactory outcomes get worse
This is a prime example of the Tea Party Parallel Universe. Rove’s Rule: portray everything in a counter-intuitive way: Preschool wastes children’s time; higher minimum wages and paid leave actually hurt workers; the gender pay gap isn’t caused by discrimination against women; immigration and guv’ment health care are bad for everyone.

eligible voters: the clever way the Tea Party defends voter exclusion acts, claiming that they are defending he rights of legitimate voters. Apparently being a US citizen is not  legitimate claim to being able to vote.

evangelism: not so much the right to “testify” and even try to convert so much as the right to claim access to absolute truth–fundamentalism. Only acceptance of their absolutism can bring absolution; their access to authoritative truth justifies their authoritarianism.

guilt: the “self-flagellating” agenda (see above) of the AP US History test and curriculum. Any attempts to discuss gender, class, race, identity, social justice, colonialism or white privilege are thinly-veiled guilt trips. In a way, any critical look at American history is now driven by he liberal “agenda; any moral principles are dismissed as “attitudinizing.”

hit piece: any article, especially in the NY Times, critical of Tea Party candidates.

inferior military: even though our military budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next countries, our military is somehow “inferior.”

intrusion: any Afro-American presence in spaces where they aren’t commonplace or welcome, as recently in Dallas.

mouthing off: complaining about the police in public. In fact, all political dissent from the Libs is considered “mouthing off.”

naturally-occurring ozone: used as an excuse to gut all emissions standards and regulations. This is of course a non-sequitur, since it refers to natural causes, whereas EPA regulations are aimed at human causes.

no saint: as in the cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, etc., victims of police brutality are themselves transformed into menacing perpetrators, “thugs,” etc. Anyone less than a saint seems to be fair game.

value vacuum: the moral rot at the heart of all minority and immigrant cultures in America.  This failure to assimilate “American” values has created a seething mass of nihilists, a pathology of separateness.

transnational progressivism: a smear that seems to mean identification with any form of multilateralism or humanitarianism beyond America. Such identification (mocked as a “quivering sensitivity”) is considered a betrayal of patriotism, even a kind of reason.