Writes Harry Binswanger at Forbes:
Statism, the concentration of power in the government at the expense of individual liberty, cannot be sold to the American people. The statists in this country have always cloaked their agenda, marching us blindfolded toward the elimination of our freedom and our rights.
Statists do not dare announce: “The individual must be subordinated to the state, rights be damned.” Instead, they change the meaning of old terms and introduce new ones to disguise the nature and meaning of what they advocate.
President Obama has developed this perversion of language into an art form.
His first campaign spoke of “Change we can believe in” without once explaining change from what and to what. He couldn’t, because the change he sought was from semi-freedom to unfreedom.
He spoke of “hope” without once naming what was to be hoped for. He couldn’t, because, for him, the object of that hope was government handouts funded by money taken from those who had earned it–legalized plunder, in the well-turned phrase of Frederic Bastiat.
“We’re all in this together,” the President repeatedly says–without telling us what “this” is. The woozy, undefined “this” turns out to be a package-deal of the voluntary cooperation of free men and the forced regimentation of rightless serfs of an omnipotent state.
As an aid to those who treasure their freedom, I offer this dictionary of Obamaspeak, so that they may know what they are actually up against.
Read the rest of A Dictionary of Obamaspeak.