Issuepedia:Reclaiming words

Overview

One of Issuepedia's goals is to reclaim a number of words which have been effectively re-defined by abusive opponents to be little better than epithets or code-words used to drive popular opinion by avoiding any real understanding of what is being discussed. Abusive word re-definition impoverishes the English language and, as George Orwell so eloquently showed in 1984, is itself a manipulative tool for controlling and restricting the way people discuss and resolve problems.

Words

For now, this is just a list of words off the top of my head; some explanation of how those words have been distorted will be forthcoming ASAP. --Woozle 18:27, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

• moral, right, wrong, decent
• honor
• truth
• "good news" in many contexts has become synonymous with Christian evangelism, which many people do not consider to be good news
• liberal (US)
• conservative (US)
• family values
• terrorist(s), terrorism
• communist(s), communism
• patriot(ism)
• security (as in "homeland security", an excuse to do whatever We want; also as in "taking extreme measures in order to look like we're doing something about the problem without actually having any kind of sensible policy for reducing actual danger", e.g. the extremely inconvenient post-9/11 rules at airports which are about as effective as building half a dam... after the river has been diverted, even.)
• duty
• country (as in "duty, honor, country")
• American, un-American
• offensive