Language

It's been a real thrill watching the Democratic National Convention this week (especially with 50-60 fellow Dems here in LBK!) and feeling the high of the energy from all the great speakers the party has to offer - Clinton, Obama, Sharpton, Clark, Edwards, and finally even Kerry to name some of my own personal favorites. (Who were your favorite speakers at the convention?) But beyond the pure energy of watching other Democrats get excited about being Democrats, I am thrilled to see that now the Democratic Party is seriously fighting the battle over language. With the way the conservate propaganda machine has been operating for the past decade, we need to balance the language of political debate in our nation. From erudite-conservative-windbag William Safire on down through average-bully-conservative-windbags O'Reilly and Hannity to screaming-thug-conservative-windbag Rush Limbaugh, the RNC talking-points armada has successfully demonized words (like liberal), people (Clinton, anyone?), policies (reckless tax-and-spend!), and entire regions of the U.S. (e.g. the coasts) through careful choice of words and phrases to be repeated ad nauseum. Now it's clear that our wonderfully united Democratic Party has some positive, irrefutable language of it's own: WE CAN DO BETTER ... HOPE IS ON THE WAY ... ONE AMERICA ... A STRONGER AMERICA ...

I love it!

I plan to do my part in the language war by enforcing the positive meanings of applicable words and phrases that the RNC hasn't destroyed yet. Progressive. Populist. Civil liberties. Equality under the law. A clean environment. Social responsibility. (Which phrases am I forgetting?) Careful language usage is an everyday way to change the tone and blow away the RNC smokescreen from political discourse.