For too long the bad guys have been allowed to define the terms in the national political debate. We have been complacent in letting "tolerance" mean "acceptance," "change" mean "the good," "progressive" to not mean "socialism" and greed mean the desire to keep what one earns. It is time to take the language back as well as the country. I for one am pretty sick of hearing that to be progressive means an endless spiral into the abyss of government control of just about everything.

We need to stop allowing this dishonesty to creep into our language and our conversations. Stop the debate! Make the left winger justify the use of the word "progressive" when they claim it as the definition of their political leanings. What makes taking greater percentages of tax dollars out of the pockets of the earners "progressive?" I will not sacrifice that word and turn it over to those whose definition is insulting to me. I see nothing progressive about today's liberalism--hell I don't see anything particularly liberal about today's liberalism let alone progressive. Why is it "conservative" to want lowered taxes? Since taxes have progressively risen since the word was coined, seems that any attempt to lower them would be liberal.

Tolerance is another word that has taken a beating at the hands of the socialists. Somehow, the words tolerance and intolerance have taken on meanings in and of themselves that they really don't have. There are now value judgments for the words without a definition of what you are tolerant of or intolerant of. I am tolerant of some things and am intolerant of others. But to be intolerant has negative meanings simply because of the hijacking of the word for political purposes. It is like the word "change." While change may be inevitable, when did it automatically become given that change is good? If I push you off a cliff that is change. While I have changed your circumstance it may only be good from my perspective. A plague is change. Is it good?

Another word that is misused is entitlement. It used to be that to be entitled to something you had to have earned something. Now, managing to wriggle out of your mother's womb makes you "entitled" to all sorts of goodies taken by force from those who created or earned them. People think they are entitled to housing, food, medical care, transportation, education, electricity, and all the things their neighbors have had to work all their lives to earn. You are entitled only to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That which keeps you alive isn't provided it is merely there for you to support yourself. Liberties are those things you can do without the help of others, like speech and beliefs.. And while you can pursue happiness to your hearts content, there is no guarantee that you will ever catch any. You are certainly not entitled to any.

Last but certainly not least is the most misinterpreted word in the language. That word is "selfishness." How is it selfish to want to keep what you earn and not selfish to demand the government take stuff from those who earned it to give it to you? I think that it is a lot more selfish to want something for nothing than to keep what you create. It is the "progressive, tolerant, entitled, liberal" who is selfish. They see the world as theirs and theirs only. They see everything that exists in the world as belonging to anyone who can get a plurality of voters together to compel the government to take it from the owners. Don't just question their ideas but the very premises they use to formulate their arguments.