The far-left hates liberty. Isn’t it time to stop praising them as being liberal? Part II

If we want to defeat socialism and Conserve Liberty, we have to stop using the reality defying language of the Left.

Bernie Sanders recently gave a speech inverting reality to redefine socialism. It was replete with some modernized versions of the tired old tropes of the Communist Manifesto. But the key part included some absurd assertions on Liberty that would have made a younger version of George Orwell proud.

Apparently no one can be ‘free’ unless they have a claim on the time, labor and property of others in society. In the Orwellian mindset of Bernie Sanders and others of the national socialist Left, Liberty means that you should be ‘free’.. to enslave others. No word on whether the people forced to provide their time, labor and property to Bernie voters that are ‘free’.

It is a fact that every living being from bacteria to Brontosauri has had to exert effort in order to survive. However, the Leftist mindset sees an opportunity to control every aspect of everyone’s life in trying to alter this essential fact of life. For if they can assert that every individual has a collective obligation to society at large, they get to enforce that obligation, since they consider themselves to the moral superiors of everyone else. They know this because they are the moral superiors of everyone else.

In this inversion of Liberty from the Left, freedom means that you should be provided with free healthcare, free housing, free college, free food, free childcare and just about any free benefit they can conjure up. Never mind that there isn’t enough money to provide all of these ‘freedoms’ or that the people forced to provide them could hardly be considered to be ‘free’. We’re also to forget about the fact that these ancient ideas run contrary to human nature and that they have never worked in the 400 years that this ‘social’ experiment has been run.

Part I of this series proved that the Far-Left has become the enemy of Liberty while they use labels that falsely imply the polar opposite. Even though Leftists have become increasingly hostile to freedom and basic reality, they still falsely claim to be ‘Liberal’. Part II will present the case for a two-step approach in rhetorically cutting them off at the kneecaps in depriving them of this deception.

The Orwellian language of the enemies of Liberty on the Left.

Ideas are conveyed and considered through the shorthand of language. A positive word connotes a positive thought or feeling on a particular issue, while a negative word has the opposite effect. If Leftists are good at anything, it’s in word selection and exploitation. It’s the reason they put so much effort in trying to control free speech and dictating the terms of debate.

This is why it is imperative that we of the Pro-Liberty Right avoid being trapped into using the language of the Socialist-Left, debating the issues on their terms. This unnecessarily places us in an immediate disadvantage when it’s just a question of choosing the proper words and having the discipline to use them properly.

Eleutheros to Libertas.

There is a reason the Left loves to exploit the derivatives certain ancient words. The first has its origins in Greek: free (liberated), unbound (unshackled); (figuratively) free to realize one’s destiny in Christ.

The second is a derivative of the first, howbeit the etymology is somewhat murky. The second is the Roman personification of Liberty and freedom. The ancient term Libertas has a number of positive and similar sounding derivatives with the two-syllable ‘liber’ common to the words Liberation, Liberty and Liberal.

Each of these three derivatives convey the positive idea of being unbound and free from restraint. When used by the Far-Left this runs contrary to their true meaning because their socialist ideology has the opposite effect, the assertions of Bernie ‘we must be free to enslave others’ Sanders notwithstanding.

Leftists love thinking of themselves a ‘Liberators’ or the vaunted protectors of Liberty, but it is their incessant use of the term Liberal that needs to be corrected. Far too many people wrongly associate socialistic slavery with this contrary term. While many falsely apply some sort of post-modernism ideas to the term, it cannot be denied that Liberal connotes the same positive ideas of freedom as the words Liberty and Liberator. Many associate the real enslavement of society with being Liberal and by extension Liberty and Liberation to the point that the media contradictorily uses the term to refer to socialism.

Defeating the Socialist-Left by depriving them of their false labeling.

Defeating the Leftists on this subject is just a two-step process of taking back the word and having the discipline to use Leftist instead of Liberal. Then it’s just a question of rhetorically pounding Leftists as being hypocrites in trying to sell socialistic slavery as ‘Liberation’ or ‘Liberty’.

We have already made the point that true Liberals belong on the right side of the political spectrum here, here, and here. The fact is, the Conservative-Right side is represented in the Liberal party in Australia. Consider the through the looking-glass mindset of the Left characterizing a win of the Australian Liberal party entitled as ‘How Liberalism Loses’ taking note that they scrupulously avoid using the actual name of the Liberal party in Australia.

Why it is extremely important to use the term Leftist instead of Liberal.

It should be an easy fix to the situation, given that both words start with the same letter and have the same length. It’s just a matter of understanding the vast difference in the meaning of the two words and why we all need to have the discipline to just use Leftist in referring to those people.

Those using the term Liberal when referring to the Left are complicit in perpetrating their deception on who they are. Leftists don’t consider Liberal to be a pejorative. They smile when we use the odd phrases such as ‘Owning the Libs’ because that reinforces their supposed ‘Liberal’ street cred. The same holds true for any variation of terms that have a ‘Lib’ portion.

The Word Salad approach to labeling the Left.

While many understood the logic in this effort, there are still some on the Conservative-Right that still use a ‘Word Salad’ approach when referring to the Left. They will begin using Leftist and switch to Liberal at some point, followed by the term Progressive in another instance, then perhaps switching back to Leftist in another.

No one is really impressed by the undisciplined use of these terms, there really is no point in continuing the practice. One word is sufficient, the Far-Left has no qualms about using the term ‘Far-right’ in referring to the Pro-Liberty side of the aisle. This refers back to one of the Left’s biggest lies: that the Nazis weren’t socialists. But that doesn’t stop them from trying to reinforce that lie at every opportunity where up is down and Left is Right – meaning a socialist workers’ party of the Left is somehow of the ‘Far-Right’.

It is time to fight back on this front instead of conceding the language of the Left, it is how they lie about who they are and what we are. It is how they deceive people who are unaware of their true nature.

The Takeaway.

The Socialist-Left revels in being ‘Liberators’, the defenders of Liberty and of course as being Liberal.
Those positive sounding attributes belong to the Conservative-Right, that why it is important to use the correct word.

Using Leftist instead of Liberal takes away one of the Left’s biggest deceptions, why wouldn’t anyone follow that advice?

Originally published on the NOQ Report