Ten Conservative Phrases We Should Take Back
September 19, 2015Matt Terzi Politics
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There are certain conservative phrases right-wingers use frequently that make my right eye twitch. Phrases that shouldn’t mean what they want them to mean…Phrases we shouldn’t simply accept their definitions of. These terms have been slithering through the conservative vernacular for years, if not decades. I think it’s high time we take those conservative phrases back and alter their definitions to more accurately reflect what they should mean, not to liberals or conservatives, but to Americans in general.
10 CONSERVATIVE PHRASES RIGHT-WINGERS HAVE NO BUSINESS USING.
We’ve all heard these conservative phrases, like ‘right to life’ and ‘family values,’ But their definitions aren’t very good…
1. Right To Life
What They Mean: People should have a right to survive, so long as they haven’t been born yet.
What It Should Mean: People should have a right to life, so we should enact legislation that ensures people (particularly the ones who’ve already been born) can survive in the world. No more defunding Planned Parenthood or attempting to derail health care legislation. We need true universal health care; a single-payer plan akin to the one proposed by Bernie Sanders. We should declare that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. We should spend less on war and more on helping our citizens out of poverty with programs like SNAP, WIC, etc. We should raise the minimum wage so people working those jobs can survive and not starve in their apartments while the power company shuts their lights off.
2. Take Our Country Back
What They Mean: America should revert back to the way things were in the 1950’s, before evil Kenyan socialists like Barack Obama were even born, and before gays could come out of hiding and publicly express their love for each other.
What It Should Mean: We should take back control of Congress from special interests. We should take America’s labor laws back to a time before the egregious wealth of the billionaire class began stifling the opportunities of the people and laying waste to American ingenuity. We should take our country back to the era where Republicans could agree with Democrats without being labeled a “RINO” and getting shoved under a bus, an era before conservatives became engulfed in a bubble of hyper-partisanship.
3. Class Warfare
What They Mean: Any effort to raise taxes on America’s wealthiest citizens and/ or on corporations, even if by only a smidge, and any effort to enact legislation that America’s millionaires and billionaires aren’t keen on.
What It Should Mean: America’s wealthiest citizens using said wealth to buy congressmen and shuffle around laws so they can personally prosper while everyone else suffers is a declaration of war on the poor and middle class.
4. Family Values
What They Mean: We should discourage homosexuality, marriage equality, and divorce, while shaping our laws in such a way that America becomes a Christian theocracy.
What It Should Mean: We should work on legislation that helps American families with policies that American families would value. Universal health care, universal childcare, public education, a true investment into infrastructure, and either Hillary Clinton’s college tuition proposal or Bernie Sanders’ plan for universal college tuition… all of that would be a good start.
5. Illegal Immigration
What They Mean: A (brown) person who comes to America without adequate paperwork, “taking jobs” that no American citizen actually wants or is wiling to do.
What It Should Mean: An American corporation that moves jobs out of the country and parks massive chunks of their wealth in offshore bank accounts to evade paying taxes, all while expecting to profit off of the American people.
6. Right To Work
What They Mean: Unions tend to financially and morally support democrats, and they play by the same rules we set up for the corporations that back republicans. That doesn’t work for us, so we’re going to make it difficult, if not entirely impossible, to join a union or for the unions to have any real collective bargaining power.
What It Should Mean: Every American citizen should have a right to employment, and rights as employees. No company should be allowed to ship jobs overseas and profit from foreign labor while American workers are unemployed. Every American worker should have a right to earn a reasonably fair wage for their workplace contributions, and to earn equal pay regardless of gender or race, while working in conditions that prioritize the health and safety of those workers above all else.
7. Values Voter
What They Mean: A conservative voter who bases their decisions solely on their Christian-conservative views and the endorsements of the religious leaders who back those candidates.
What It Should Mean: A voter who takes the time to learn as much about a candidate as they’re able, weighing their positions carefully and considering their views based not on second-hand editorials, but by what those candidates actually say and what they’ve actually done. A voter who strives to be as knowledgeable as possible and to make informed decisions in the voting booth.
8. Job Creators
What They Mean: Millionaires and billionaires who work at or own massive corporations, particularly those that fund their campaigns.
What It Should Mean: American business leaders who value their workers above their personal profit margins and create meaningful, lasting employment for said workers, with fair opportunities for advancement and policies that accelerate the opportunities of those workers.
9. Handouts
What They Mean: The government providing essential services to poor and middle class people who rely on that assistance for survival, which conservatives consider to be “handouts” that “buy votes” for Democrats.
What It Should Mean: Corporate welfare by way of huge tax cuts and subsidies that these corporations don’t need. Though you might reasonably argue that these aren’t really “handouts” so much as “purchases,” given that the wealthy buy politicians and, in turn, buy legislation that suits them.
10. Traditional Marriage
What They Mean: A marriage between one man and one woman. It might end in divorce and it doesn’t really matter if the man cheats on the woman with other women or even other men, or vice versa, so long as there’s no “gay stuff” happening during the wedding.
What It Should Mean: Two consenting adults who love each other and want to express that love ceremoniously, while also gaining access to the same joint benefits any other couple is entitled to in this country
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