"Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart."

Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (V. iii. 108).

Progressives need stronger words.

One of the many irritating things about listening to Republicans is their outrageous use of word frames to mask reality. Inheritance taxes became death taxes. Healthcare reform became Obamacare and the job-killing healthcare law. Rich people became job creators. Lately they are employing the phrase class warfare to describe any effort to increase public revenues. And what about the word entitlements and the phrase ponzi scheme to describe Social Security? Republicans have a focus-group factory that produces this garbage and a group-think culture that gets all their lemming-like leaders to lip sync it in lock step.

Listening to right-wing pundits and politicians spewing this Orwellian rot gives rise to several questions. First, do they really think Americans are that stupid? The answer must be yes, because why else would they repeat the propaganda? Second, are Americans really that stupid? We can surmise that the answer to this question is also yes, because large percentages of the population respond to Republican word frames in opinion polls.

As a result, progressive action becomes mired in unmasking the psychological and policy frames created by bogus Republican language. Instead of affirmatively advocating for what we believe, we begin our case defensively, having to rinse off the mud flung upon our positions. Just this week Obama felt the need (justifiably) to explain that restoring tax rates for millionaires and billionaires to Clinton-boom-era levels is not class warfare. It's absurd.

What can be done?

Two things.

First, we need to explicitly surface and reject the right-wing terms of the debate at every juncture. No politician should be compelled to argue a position using his opponent's concepts and language from the outset. We must question and assault the framing directly. We must attack the right-wing concepts and phrases themselves, reveal them as misrepresentations and reframe them at the debate's outset.

One example would be to refuse to suffer anyone calling Social Security a benefit or an entitlement. Workers have paid their hard-earned wages into a system that has earned a surplus year after year sufficient to fund other government operations with trillions. It isn't a benefit until every sweaty dollar paid in by workers has been repaid to those workers. Until then, it is nothing less giving Americans back their hard-earned property. Let's call it what it is, returning hard-earned wages to the people who earned them, every penny. [Yes I do recognize that it is possible for someone to extract more than they put in, but so what? This happens in businesses across American every day.] It's an insult of the highest order to call it a ponzi scheme or a broken system or to label it as bankrupt. Most of all, it's an insult to our intelligence. Bankrupt systems do not produce trillions of dollars for others to waste. What would you say if your bank told you that your deposits were now considered benefits and they might have to be cut? That's where the debate ought to start. People who call Social Security payments benefits are thieves, how about that for word framing? What do they do to thieves in Texas?

Second, we need to advance a whole new set of stronger progressive words and phrases. Then we need to insist on using this new language. Below the squiggly, I have some suggestions along with current examples to prompt discussion and creativity. Admittedly, this is not easy work and it needs to continue every day. I hope readers will respond by generating suggestions to strengthen progressive language.

As Edward Bulwer-Lytton said, "The pen is mighter than the sword." Let us bring our pens to the duel and fight like hell for the truth.