Taking Back the Language: They Are Not Liberals, They Are Leftists
by Stephanie Janiczek
Clash Daily Guest Contributor
Words have meanings. It has taken conservatives years to understand that and yet we still go about referring to our nemesis’ in politics and culture as “liberals”. They are not liberal. They are progressives. Even the word “progressive” isn’t truly accurate. They are in fact leftists.
We ceded a lot of our culture to the left decades ago. They usurped words like “liberal”, painted the Nazis as right wing and have also taken the word “freedom” and changed its meaning to mean doing whatever you want. When conservatives decide to make a stand and retake our language that will set back the left quite a bit.
The word “liberal” according to the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary means: of or befitting a man of free birth. It is funny but in the dictionary the other more nefarious meanings are also mentioned. And this one, the real meaning was under archaic. As in old.
Of course the other meaning of liberal, lacking moral restraint is considered “obsolete”. This is a huge example of how the left has silently taken over our language because liberal actually also means licentiousness and, of course, now days loose morality and a gravity free, zero consequence free world is the rule. If it feels good, do it. But there are always consequences, leftists just don’t speak of them and if we conservatives make mention we are labeled narrow minded and judgmental. The left versus reality is a pretty consistent battle.
If a liberal, like the ones we know in the media and politics, were actually liberal they’d most likely be more “conservative” than we are. Take the word “conservative” for example. One gets a vision of a person who is very staid, rigid and fixed in his ways. How many real conservatives do we know that actually fit that stereotype? Not many. The word does not mean now what it meant and yet somehow that meaning sticks to the right like glue.
In history we have a real problem with the presentation of Nazism and even Italian fascism. When I studied German History, it never made sense to me to call these statists right wing. The further to the right one goes the more liberal people’s views of government control is, and what I mean by “liberal” is the less people want government control. After all liberal means not bound by authority, orthodoxy or even traditions.
But somehow Hitler, who is on video proclaiming a workers revolution in Germany, and Mussolini, who was a socialist and never quite stopped being a socialist, are far right wingers. Consider what already has been talked about here and how words have meanings: how can a National Socialist German Worker’s Party member or an Italian Fascist be right wingers? Yet in our schools, ever since before World War II, Mussolini and Hitler were and are called far right wingers; and history says they were not.
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister, understood how words have power. The quote, “The bigger the lie the more people will believe it” has been often attributed to him. The left as always is filled with brilliant people who by their educations have been able to manipulate our language, and in turn other disciplines like history, by changing the meanings of words.
Republicans are racists, when history shows time and time again Republicans were the ones who supported abolition, and Civil Rights. The National Rifle Association is a group of frightened white people. The NRA was started in 1871 as a group of people who wanted to protect black farmers from the Ku Klux Klan which was an outreach of the southern Democrat Party. Their compassion is more Ebenezer Scrooge, are-there-no-prisons kind of compassion. Their embrace of all only goes so far as other leftists.
A Conservative woman like Sarah Palin, a black conservative like Allen West are smeared, ridiculed and viciously attacked for not following the herd, for labeling the left for what it is and pointing out the truth. Welfare as Lyndon Johnson said has made a true underclass of people as dependent on the government as they were on greedy factory owners, or plantation owners. There was a reason why the left attacked the traditional family: because that it is where real power and change begins. These are irrefutable facts. If one knows history, one knows in the end history, no matter who writes it, does not lie.
People changing the meaning of the word “liberal” back to what it is supposed to mean will be told things like language evolves. Of course languages evolve, however the meaning of a word cannot be changed in its essence. If liberal means broad minded then liberals should by definition be broad minded, and this is the irony: they are not broad minded. Recent history proves that so called liberals are not broad minded. The irony is “liberals” as they are today are as narrow-minded, judgmental and bigoted as they accuse conservatives of being. It is a classic case of projection. We must stop calling these leftists liberals.
The left projects all of its cynicism, bigotry, misandry and misogyny onto the right. They use words to divide people against one another, and to divide the enemy. The enemy in their minds is us. The American people. They have come to depend on all sides not to know what a word means and not to know history. We have to remedy that.
The struggle won’t be easy, but taking back definitions and culture is never easy. But if we want to fix what is broken we have to be courageous enough to use language in the right way, and context. A leftist is a leftist, not a liberal. Progressive is another definition of leftist and history won’t change who they are or what they want.
Stephanie Janiczek is a former Capitol Hill Staff Assistant, Schedule C Appointee and Leadership Institute alum. Military Wife, Hunter, Horse enthusiast, dog owner, writer and feminist kryptonite.
