The most powerful element of this type of binary language is that you can add anything to the right column once you have people on your side. Want assault-weapons in the hands of minors? Tax breaks for industries that pollute the environment? More mercury in the water supply? Want to revoke civil rights? Side-step the Bill of Rights? Just add them to the right column and everyone will automatically step up in your defense. After all, that’s what you would expect from a Christian-American who cares about his or her family to do in a democracy.
The Most Powerful Words in the Right Vocabulary
As you first begin to reshape your vocabulary, you must be careful. Talking right is deceptively easy, but it is also possible to make errors. For example, to say someone is “committed” is not the same as saying they are “committable.” So, be careful.
Fortunately there are a number of key words that you begin using right away.
Un-American
If you are an American, then “un-American” means anything that or anyone who is not us. Any idea that you do not agree with can automatically be called “un-American” without danger of being challenged, because anyone challenging you would automatically risk being considered un-American. This is a very useful word that can be used to counter any attack on your position, no matter how well-reasoned that attack may be. Our right-talking president and his right-talking administration have been extremely effective in employing this term. In the past few years all of the following strategies have been successfully deployed:
To disagree with the president is un-American.
To oppose the president’s decision to invade Iraq is un-American.
To point out flaws in the administration’s intelligence reports is un-American.
To ask the president or his administration to provide evidence for their claims is un-American.
To question the president’s war record is un-American.
To insist on a separation of church and state is un-American.
To advocate gun control is un-American.
To ask where the money went is un-American
To question why the president has spent 20 percent of his term in office on vacation is un-American.
To show photographs of coffins containing soldiers who died removing weapons of mass destruction from a country that had no weapons of mass destruction is un-American.
To go back and quote what the administration said before is un-American.
To call for the firing of a right-talking senior advisor just because he revealed the name of a CIA operative in a right-talking effort to squash opposition to the right wing is un-American (even if the president once said he would fire anyone caught compromising the integrity of the United States).
To point of pork in bills is un-American.
To refuse to vote for bills the administration wants is un-American.
To use political ploys to undermine what the administration wants is un-American.
To claim that causing the death of tens-of-thousands of people in order to remove weapons of mass destruction from a country that had no weapons of mass destruction is possibly a misguided enterprise is un-American.
Note that “un-American” automatically sets up the us/them binary that is so crucial to talking right, making the term doubly effective. No self-respecting American can side with an idea that is “un-American.” Furthermore, that which is “un-American” would not be subject to any American protections, so you don’t have to worry about civil rights or protections granted under the constitution or any of those messy notions about fair treatment under the law.
Clever, huh?
Terrorist
“Terrorist” is another powerful us/them word that reduces all issues down to two sides. Originally, it was coined to refer to the Jacobins during the French Revolution (so you have something to thank the French for, but don’t ever admit that publicly, as other right-talking people have already established that the French are un-American.).
The Jacobins (in case you skipped your history classes), were responsible for the “Reign of Terror.” The earliest reference dates to 1795 when the Jacobins were called “terrorists” for the “cruel and impolitic maxim of keeping the people in implicit subjection by a merciless severity” (OED). The term also referred to “any one who attempts to further his views by a system of coercive intimidation” (OED).
At this point, you may be asking yourself, but isn’t coercive intimidation one of the primary strategies of right-talking? Isn’t the whole point of using the rhetoric of the right to force others to agree with you on all points by aligning unrelated issues to their self-definition as loyal Americans or good Christians? Isn’t that why part of the right rhetoric is to make claims such as showing pictures of flag-covered coffins of dead soldiers will weaken the moral of our soldiers, when we all know that if our soldiers’ moral is going to be weakened, it will probably be weakened by actually seeing their fellow soldiers blown to bits?
This is true, but be careful. Pointing this out is un-American and could mark you as a pro-terrorist liberal. As a right-talker, you need to remember the following:
IMPORTANT POINT 2: Ignore Irony
Say everything as if there is no such thing as irony. Remember, most people can’t define “irony” anyway, so when you talk right, you can ignore inconvenient ironies, and are free to talk about western history’s greatest pacifist and champion of the poor (I’m referring here to Jesus of Nazareth, in case you haven’t gotten around to reading your Bible yet) as a pro-war advocate of big business.
Nowadays, you are free to call anyone or anything a terrorist. If Education Secretary Rod Paige can call the National Education Association a “terrorist organization,” you can call anyone who disagrees with you (or bothers you with troublesome facts) a terrorist and you can label any organization that promotes anything you don’t agree with (or calls for open debate of troublesome facts) a “terrorist organization.”
Sometimes you will want to soften the term. For example, you may be talking about a war hero, a member of Congress, or the grieving mother of a marine killed in action. In these cases, it might work against you to directly call them terrorists. But fret not, you are still free to say that their actions or comments “give comfort to the terrorists.” This is a clever way of associating them with “terrorists” without having to directly call them terrorists.
Liberal
Other right-talkers have already paved the way for you to use the term “liberal” as a pejorative. The Oxford English Dictionary defines liberal in the following ways:
Liberal, a and n. Originally a distinctive epithet of those ‘arts’ or ‘sciences’ that were considered ‘worthy of a free man.’
Pertaining to or suitable to persons of superior social station.
Free in bestowing; bountiful, generous, open-hearted.
Abundant, ample.
Free in speech or action. Free of restraint.
Free from narrow prejudice; open-minded, candid.
Free from bigotry or unreasonable prejudice in favour of traditional opinions or established institutions; open to the reception of new ideas or proposals of reform.
Of political opinions: Favourable to constitutional changes and legal or administrative reforms tending in the direction of freedom or democracy.
None of these definitions serve the right agenda. The only definition we can be concerned with as right-talkers is “opposed to Conservative” (OED).
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