Terms of Temerity: Why The Left Loathes The Words We Use

Five years ago in SurvivalBlog, I posted The Leftist Lexicon: Translating Statist Rhetoric Into Plain English, by Ray X.  Then, a few months later, I posted a brief essay that I authored. It was titled: Incendiary Words: Of Detonations and Denotations. In the latter essay, I warned that our language was being twisted by leftist terminology and that we need to hold fast to the proper, objective, and accepted meanings of words.

Most recently, I’ve noticed that the assorted leftists, statists, globalists, and collectivists who dominate the American mass media now sneer at conservatives, Christians, and libertarians when we dare to even use certain words. They consider this use signaling, or an act of utter temerity. Their condescending disdain for our proper use of the English language and the objective meanings of words seems to shout: “How dare you use that word?”

First, The OBLIGATORY Trigger Warning:

The following content may upset liberally-educated, emotionally immature, or emotionally unstable individuals. Seek a safe space, preferably with puppies and coloring books.

Terminology Clarification

One introductory note about terminology, for our foreign readers: American liberalism isn’t what’s termed libéralisme in France and other French-speaking countries. It is much closer to what is called social democracy in France and throughout the rest of Europe.  In this essay I will generally use the word leftist rather than liberal.

Here are 100 specific examples of words and phrases that leftists seem to loathe–at least in their original denotations. I will also summarize their thought processes, and many of their attempts to push alternative definitions:

1. Agenda: Leftists use the word Agenda only to refer to The Right Wing Agenda. To them, there is no Left Wing Agenda. They substitute “cause”, “struggle”, “movement”, or the ever-handy “activism.”
2. Alternative Media: To a conservative, this means Sean Hannity. To a liberal, this means Amy Goodman.
3. America/American/Murica: To a leftist, this is synonymous with shameful racism, hate, and xenophobia.
4. Armed Homeowner:  To a leftist, he’s seen as angry, paranoid, and enforcing his Privilege
5. Bald: He’s just follically challenged.
6. Benghazi: The word that shall not be spoken.
7. Binary: To me, a binary is a great shooting range target that explodes with a bang and lots of smoke. But to a lefty, it is an obsolete form of a Driver’s License.
8. Bisexual: Leftists have truncated this to just “Bi”, to make it sound more friendly than strange.
9. Border:  To a leftist, just an arbitrary line on a map, rather than a guarded fence that helps defend a nation against invasion.
10. Border Security: To a leftist, border security is enforced racism. (But only the security in the southern border.)
11. Capitalism: As the epicenter of hate for leftists, capitalism is seen as the source of all that is evil and despicable in the world. Just one notch down: Free Enterprise.
12. Charity: To a leftist, someone circumventing the official redistribution of wealth by the government. “They’re not really generous. They just want a tax deduction.”
13. Child/Children: To a leftist, actually just a pre-adult. Most recently, pre-adults have been anointed to be the experts on making firearms policy and interpreting the Second Amendment–presumably because of their profound lack of life experience and knowledge of guns. Children are used as pawns and human shields by social activists. All leftist laws are passed “For The Children.”
14. Christ/Christian (Jesus, Yeshua): To most leftists, a mythical dude. They claim that he never existed, so they deny both his historicity and his message. To them, he and his message cannot exist because this is a stumbling block to sinful licentiousness.
15. Colored: It the modern mental-linguistic gymnastics of The Left, the old term “Colored people” is considered racist but somehow it is not racist to use the term “People of Color”.
16. Constitution: Hearing about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights amendments cause leftists to squirm. They see them as stumbling blocks to their plans, and they’d prefer that they didn’t exist. British leftists particularly dislike our Constitution.
17. Conversion Therapy: To a leftist, being gay is either genetic or a lifestyle choice, but reverting to heterosexuality is impossible. They think that attempting that should be a crime.
18. Creation: To a leftist, it was just a random chain of events over the course of billions of years.
19. Crime/Criminal: To a leftist, the perpetrator is actually The Victim. He was forced into crime wealth redistribution by the oppressive upper classes.
20. Culture: To a leftist, there is no distinctive American culture, just hate and privilege. Only indigenous people or oppressed people of color are allowed to have a culture. And don’t you dare try to appropriate it.
21. Degenerate: A word that is avoided by leftists, because if all behavior is “open” and acceptable, there can be no degenerate behavior.
22. Discussion/Debate: This is no longer what we were taught it means. Today, it is actually a Maoist debating a Leninist. Or just a Stalinist delivering a lecture. Anyone else may not speak: “Shut up you ignorant bigoted Nazi Redneck Trumpist hicks!”
23. Equality: Not what we think it means. It is now radical egalitarianism, with some given far more rights than others. George Orwell saw it coming.
24. Evil: To à gauche, using the word evil is judgemental.
25. Faith: To most leftists, a belief in a non-existent creator.
26. Farming: To a conservative, this is a traditional way of earning a living. But to a leftist, except for small-scale Sustainable Fair Trade farming by People Of Color, anything else is Factory Farming and hence The Rape of Gaia.
27. Fat: To a leftist, he’s not fat. He’s just metabolically challenged. The use of this word triggers leftists in general and SJWs in particular, who preach “Body Positivity.”  An addendum from Dan, a blog reader:  “’Fat’ is perfectly acceptable to use when describing white men. It is only considered body shaming if it is used to describe women or minorities.”
28. Farm Invasion Murders: To a leftist, these atrocities inSouthern Africa are just “Activists trying to overcome centuries of white privilege.”
29. Fetus: To a leftist a fetus is not an unborn baby. They say it is a “non-viable tissue mass.” This unrecognizable “blob” of cells magically (and legally) becomes a baby on Day 196 of a pregnancy. (They should ignore the fact that some babies born before Day 150 live to normal adulthood.) Up until Day 195, they claim it is just a Choice. Women should also ignore the distinct sensation of being kicked by their Choice/Tissue Blob as early as Day 112.
30. Firearms: To a leftist, these are mostly “unregistered assault weapons”, owned by Trumpist haters. Unless, of course they are possessed by Trained Professionals in The Government–the only ones who can be trusted to use them properly to enforce social justice.
31. Freedom: In the Leftist perspective, there is no freedom to do anything, at least not without official permission or a license. There is only freedom from things. These include: freedom from fear (gun control), freedom from want (welfare), and freedom from religion (absolute moral license).
32. Freeloaders: To a leftist, these people should instead be called welfare recipients or entitled stakeholders.
33. Free Speech: To Progressives, all political or religious speech is hate speech, unless it is spoken by a Progressive. (Only then is it Constitutionally Protected Free Expression.)
34. Gun Collection: To a leftist, anything more than two guns constitutes an “arsenal”, and the owner should undergo psychiatric evaluation.
35. He: To overcome “countless millennia of patriarchal oppression”, leftists prefer the new and improved Ze or the generic They.
36. Heterosexual: To a leftist, you can be born gay. But heterosexuality is a choice, that deserves frequent re-examination and Maoist self-criticism for the implicit privilege of exercising the dominant culture.
37. Holocaust: To a conservative, this means the historically proven Nazi Holocaust of the early 1940s. But to Modern American Leftists, “holocaust” and “genocide” are words that can be applied to anyone and everyone they see as being oppressed or just demeaned–even if it is someone getting their feelings hurt.
38. Homosexual: A leftist never speaks the outdated clinical and judgemental term homosexual. Instead, they use the terminology Gay, Bi, or the ever-expanding LGBTTQQIAAP acronym. To them it is a “lifestyle choice”, unless of course you were Born Gay^(TM).
39. Husband: To a leftist, this is an archaic word is synonymous with slave owner or cattle owner. They only use the terminology Spouse or Partner.
40. Idiot: To a leftist, he’s just academically challenged. Oh, and he always “has something to add to the conversation.” (The moaning, I suppose.)
41. Illegal Alien: Leftists claim that there are no illegal aliens–only “undocumented immigrants”. By that logic, your local illegal narcotics dealer is merely an “unlicensed pharmacist.”  In 2017, Senator Kamala Harris famously tweeted: “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” I suggest that Kamala reads: Title 8 U.S. Code § 1325 – “Improper Entry By Alien”. That is a Federal crime. Committing a crime makes one a…criminal.
    
42. Insane: A clinical word that is avoided by leftists, at all costs. They tell us we must accept (and hire) those who are Reality Challenged.
43. It is okay to be white: This is perhaps he most profound trigger phrase in present-day America. To a leftist it is only okay to be People of Color, and to be white is a source of guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Ironically, to consider everyone equals is anathema to leftists. So much for their claimed open-mindedness, egalitarianism, and inclusiveness.
44. Justice:  To a conservative, this means a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers. But to a leftist, it can mean seizing the property, life savings, and livelihood of anyone with whom they disagree, without due process.
45. Left Wing: Left wingers now only rarely call themselves The Left, Socialist, Leftist, or Communist. That is because “Progressive” sounds so much nicer.
46. Liberal: After many decades of doing their best to destroy America, they now generally call themselves “Progressive.” By picking new terminology, they hope to distance themselves from their perceived (and true)  socialist/globalist goals.
47. Life begins at conception: Nay, the leftists claim: It begins in the Third Trimester. (In most States.) An unborn baby is the result. Abortion is a murder.
48. Livestock: To a leftist, raising livestock is a form of slavery. Meat is an almost abstract substance that does not come from ranches. It comes from the supermarket, plastic-wrapped.
49. Looting: Nope. Not to a leftist. It is just spontaneous wealth redistribution, usually in a Street Action. (See: Riot.)
50. Marriage: The re-writing of 3,000 years of legal, moral, and religious tradition, in one court case. To a full-tilt leftist, marriage is now legitimate only if it is gay. Otherwise it is reinforcing centuries of oppressive patriarchy. Note: “Marriage” has not yet been expanded by the Supreme Court to include polygamy, pets, or livestock. Yet.
    
51. Mining: To a conservative, this is a traditional way of earning a living. But to leftists, it is The Rape of Gaia. A True Believer liberal would rather ban all mining and oil drilling. They believe that it is better to freeze in the dark than be an Exploitive Capitalist. Just hearing the word “mining” evokes a reaction something akin to a vegan hearing the words “meat eating.”
52. Mister (Mr.): That now unspeakable word, to a leftist, “reinforcing the violent sexist patriarchal domination… …inherent in the system”.
53. Molestation: To a leftist, this is an illegal heterosexual act–not homosexual.  (If homosexual gay, then it is often explained as  “exploring curiosity”, “questioning”, and/or “mentoring.”
54. Morality: Inverted by leftist obfuscation in academia and the mass media, so that what was once immoral is now considered moral. (And often, vice versa.)
55. N Word: Only black people can use “the N word”, as a friendly casual greeting to each other, usually preceded by “Whasssup?” But it is horrific and criminal for anyone else to use it. This, we are told, in not a double standard.
56. Nazi: To a conservative, a “Nazi” means a member of the evil National Socialist party or an adherent to that political viewpoint. But to a leftist, the term Nazi can be used at will to describe anyone who does agree with them on  any issue whatsoever. When losing a political argument, they will almost always resort to labeling their opponent a Nazi.
57. Normal: To a conservative, this means a nuclear family including one husband, one wife and then the two of them parenting children.  But from the inverted viewpoint of leftists, that is the Alternative Lifestyle!
58. Offensive: This meaning of this word has experienced near total inversion in the Leftist Lexicon. What was considered offensive to traditional Christian and Jewish Americans is now 100% “accepted” by leftists. These days, it is traditional American culture that is considered offensive.
59. Only Two Genders: This phrase drives leftists crazy. The entirely scientific biological imperative of XX and XY chromosomes being assigned at conception and written in nearly every cell of the human body deeply troubles leftists and their Social Engineer cohorts. They live in the fantasy that they can “self-identify” in additional genders. This simple fact of XX or XY binary division at the cellular level contradicts their “rainbow of genders”, “pansexual”, “genderqueer”, and no gender (“agender”) neo-speak.
60. Over-Taxed: To The Left, there is no limit to taxation, to achieve Social Justice.
61. Perversions/Perverts: The leftists who now dominate academia have revised the textbooks. These changes reverses several centuries of medical study. Now there are no more perversions. Instead, they are labelled “alternative lifestyles.”  To present-day psychologists even an affection for furniture could be called an “alternative lifestyle.”
62. Pet: To a leftist, there are no longer any pets. Only “partner animals.” A few particularly strident leftists yearn for partner animals to gain the status of spousal equivalents.
63. Poor: To a leftist, a “poor” person is simply underprivileged and not yet the beneficiary of wealth redistribution.
64. Pretty: This word troubles leftists because it implies that some women are not pretty, and that is judgemental, and sexist, and…
65. Pride: To a leftist, pride is only allowable if it is gay, bi, transgender, indigenous, or expressed by undocumented immigrants. Pride of personal accomplishment is not allowed, but pride of the luck of birth genetics somehow is.
66. Private Property: To a hard core leftist, there is no private property, only State Property. Any private use thereof requires a permit or license.
67. Profit/Profiting: To a leftist, all profit is whipped off the backs of Oppressed Peoples. They always use the same tone of voice as “molesting” when speaking the word “profiting.”
68. PTSD: This acronym used to refer to the lasting effects people exposed to the gory, repetitive horrors of war. But now, it has been expanded by liberals to include the aftermath of being leered at, or whistled at.
69. Queer: Like the N Word, this word can only by used by people inside of The Group. Any others using it is “hurtful.”
70. Racism: Leftist believe that all whites are racists, that only whites can be racists, and that whites cannot ever be the victims of racism.
71. Radical: To a leftist, there are only right wing radicals. All those on the left are called “Activists”.
72. Ranch: To a leftist, an Animal Killing Field.
73. Rape: To a conservative, rape means rape. But to leftists and SJWs there is a veritable rape continuum that  includes glances, manspreading, catcalling, and The Ultimate Horror: Flirting.  To them, those are all Rape.
74. Republican: Synonymous with Racist in the liberal mass media, even though it was Democrats who founded the KKK. And even CNN admits that more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act.
75. Responsibility: Leftists deny essences regarding their own duties, but they demand them when it comes to duties of others towards them.
76. Restroom: In  21st Century America, there can’t be just a Ladies Room and Gents Room. No, they want a Rainbow of Restroom Choices, and the the opportunity to make different restroom choices daily, depending on their mood.
77. Rich: To a leftist, being rich is a crime or a sickness. It can be cured by heavier progressive taxation and resource allocation.
78. Rights: To a leftist, only Oppressed Peoples have “rights”. Does not apply to The Rich and The Privileged. Also note that a “right” is now claimed by anyone who wants to practice sins without encumbrances.
79. Riot: To a leftist, there are no riots, unless they are conducted by Nazis or the Alt-Right. Leftists only have Street Actions.
80. Science: To the leftist only the science that matches their politics and world view is relevant. Hence, Climate Change is indisputable, yet, genetic science is either “debatable” or “out-dated.” For example, they deny that IQ is partially heritable. They want to make it a criminal offense to “deny” climate science but meanwhile believe that  denying biological science is both a moral obligation and legally enforceable.
81. Screeching: Any SJW who hears this word is instantly triggered. (Especially those who often screech.)
82. Second Amendment: To the leftist cognoscenti this Curious Antique has been superceded by “Common Sense Legislation” promulgated by schoolchildren and the media. Now they think it just a matter of time to sufficiently browbeat the State and Federal legislators into submission.
83. Segregation: We were all taught that segregation is an evil carryover of the Jim Crow era. But now we are told that we cannot complain when black students demand segregated spaces from white students, or when straights are excluded, or when a white people free day is declared.
84. Semi-Automatic: This definition has recently been re-written by leftists. It is now a “Fully Semi-Automatic weapon of war that has no place on the street.”
85. Short: To a leftist, he’s not short. He’s just vertically challenged.
86. Sin: To a leftist, using that word is judgemental. To them, there are no sins. Only choices.
87. SJW (Social Justice Warrior): The leftists who created this phrase now resent its use by non-SJWs. To The Left, SJWS are either A.) Oppressed minorities, or B.) those who were unfortunately born white, but who sympathize with them. They see their unbridled anger as a righteous reaction to the oppressive system of The Man.
88. Snowflake: Few other words trigger a leftist quite like this one. Its origin is in the novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk: “You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”
89. Sodomy/Sodomite: Leftists never use this word or mention that being a “gay man” usually includes the mis-use of the anus, bursting blood vessels and exposure to venereal disease (including HIV), and often results in a lifetime of leaking feces. Leftists always remove any reference or even inference to the sexual act itself from any mention of being a “gay.”
90. Squatting/Land Seizure: To a leftist, they’re not stealing property, they are just collectively taking action, for social justice.
91. Success: To the minds of the Blue Bourgeoisie, all success comes as result of the work of other people.  Usually People of Color and/or The Working Class. Their stock phrase: “You didn’t build that.”
92. Terrorist: To a leftist, his more kinetic Fellow Travelers are not terrorists. They are Antifa, “insurgents”, or “freedom fighters.”
93. Tolerance: What a leftist demands of you. But conversely he feels entitled to be as intolerant as much as he’d like, when judging you, your ancestry, your actions, your religion, and your opinions. In actuality, liberals practice Zero Tolerance–even for toddlers piecing Legos bricks together in the shape of a pistol.
94. Ugly: To a leftist, he’s just cosmetically challenged.
95. Vice: It used to be a sin. Now its an international news service, pushing The Agenda.
96. Victim: To a conservative, this means the actual victim of a crime. But to a leftist, it can mean so much more: Everyone who is not in the Exploiter Class is a certified Victim in one or more categories. Each of the Victim Classes now gets its own color lapel ribbon. That is, except for the LGBTTQQIAA community, who get the nifty multi-color ribbon, because they are the So Special super victims.
97. Wealthy: Leftists use this terminology only in the same disdainful tone of voice as when speaking “filthy.”
98. Western Civilization: These two words spoken together are sure to trigger leftists. The historicity of western Europe as the cradle of the Republics and the modern industrial age deeply troubles most leftists. The truth of it runs counter to what has been preached to them by liberal academia, so it causes cognitive dissonance. Can be overcome by lengthy seminars and ‘Teach-ins.”
99. Wife: Leftists now disdain any use of the word wife, except using “her wife”–in a lesbian “marriage.” Otherwise, they feel that being a wife implies some sort of ownership, like cattle. They now prefer using “spouse” or “partner.”
100. Winner: A leftist hates the word winner, because it implies that there is also a loser. For anyone on The Left there can be no winners nor losers, and certainly no academic rankings. Everyone gets a Participation Ribbon and a pat on the head.

The foregoing will surely be chastised as “Condesplaining” by leftists. So be it. They can complain all they’d like, but the simple truth is that words have long-accepted meanings.

My concluding exhortation: Be proud of the English language. Guard it, to insist that everyone use it both objectively and precisely. – JWR

Note: Permission to reprint, re-post or forward this article in full is granted, but only if credit is given to James Wesley, Rawles and first publication in SurvivalBlog (with a link.) It must not be edited or excerpted, and all included links must be left intact.