The Language of Politics

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Political debaters, when the argument over the issues heats up, often use words to describe their opponents. Sometimes, I do so as well. In all fairness, I wish to use the words accurately, only falling back on words that best describe those that fail to see things as I do. Therefore, I spent a good part of the afternoon looking up the true meanings of words. After all, in society, sometimes the meanings of words get lost in the crossfire.

My dictionary of choice is the latest version of The American Heritage College Dictionary. I use to refer to The American College Encyclopedic Dictionary, which is so big it comes in two volumes, but years have passed since the publication of the set I own, so I decided to set them aside for this particular joyride.

The first word I looked up seemed an obvious choice because bloggers and talkers on both sides of the political spectrum tend to use this word with reckless abandon.

Idiot, n. 1. A foolish or stupid person. 2. A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years. Not in scientific use.

I suppose it could be an appropriate word considering that the members of each political ideology believes the folks on the other side are foolish, perhaps stupid, and definitely thinking at a level below that of three years old. Thinking about the word further, however, I came to the conclusion a more appropriate word(s) for the members of the Liberal Left is idiot savant. The definition is: A mentally retarded person who exhibits extraordinary ability in a highly specialized area, such as mathematics or music. I don't know if you could call liberals that after all, because they are something extremely more dreadful. But in combination with being "idiots," Leftists do show exceptional talents in highly specialized areas that include, but are not limited to: Destroying economies, saying a lot without saying anything at all, spreading deception, projecting (such as being racists, and then projecting the label upon their opponents for simply disagreeing with them), convincing a segment of the population that the murder of babies is moral, hiding their Marxist nature.

Moron, n. - see above

Democrat, n. - see above

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