Well, gosh darn it.
Michael Crowley draws our attention to Fred Barnes, in an article in The Weekly Standard, decrying liberal euphemisms. Barnes comments on “spending” versus “revenues” (an example that Crowley nicely dissects), “redeployment” versus “a move to retreat, to give up, to cut and run”, “choice” versus “abortion”—notice what fine and subtle distinctions Barnes’s language allows us to make! (I expect that when Bush starts withdrawing American troops from Iraq, Barnes will change his tune very quickly on “redeployment”; and of course it’s a tremendous oversimplification to say that “pro-choice” is the same as “pro-abortion”.) But moving on:
Liberals have also pulled a switch on what they call themselves. They’ve figured out that “liberal” is a pejorative word. In the minds of millions of Americans, it means woolly-headed thinking on every sort of issue. So liberals have morphed into “progressives.” And many of their sympathizers in the media have embraced the name change. Would they do the same if conservatives wanted to call themselves, say, “traditionalists”? I suspect not.
A few points. Barnes neglects to tell us exactly how “liberal” came to be a pejorative term. Could it be, perhaps, due to the conservative a picture of boogeyman tax-and-spend liberals? Perhaps. I’m happy to call myself a liberal Democrat, but of course I’m not trying to get anyone’s votes. More important is the mote on one’s eye issue. Someone like Barnes, these days, should be embarrassed to write about liberal euphemisms. For example, I’d be happy to talk about Republican plans to “privatize” Social Security, but apparently that expression is a no-no. Do we really need to ask what’s meant by the phrases “compassionate conservatism”, “values voter”, “scientific criticisms of evolution”, “faith-based” anything, “ownership society”, “homicide bombers”, “strict constructionist judges”, “tax relief”, “pro-life”, and so forth? Republican pandering is little different from Democratic pandering—except, of course, that they’re the ones currently in charge.
