They say that if you repeat something enough, people will start believing it, even if it is patently absurd. Various words and phrases, usually coined by the liberal left, are thrown out into the public consciousness without any proof or viable substantiation. Repeated frequently, they become such a part of our national dialog that they are slung around as if they are gospel. In fact, in many cases, these phrases are in direct opposition to reality. Some of the words we use have actual connotations very different from their traditional usage or entomological meaning. A few examples:

America is strong because of its diversity. This one particularly makes my head want to explode. You hear it frequently, particularly from the left, and from groups who are championing their particular minority group or subculture. It is a common mantra of those advocating unlimited immigration, Spanish as an official second language, or those who think that assimilation of foreign immigrants into American culture is a bad idea because their old culture is “equally valid”.

No, America is not strong because of its diversity. America is (or has been) strong because of its unity.

E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one. The emphasis here is not on the many, it’s on the one; many peoples coming together to make one nation, not many peoples coming together to make many nations. America has long been described as a “melting pot”, where people from all over come, leave their former nationalities, cultures, and hostilities behind and become Americans; a new people.

This has to be true, otherwise America would be an anarchic battleground. We would have Irish Catholics fighting English Protestants, Palestinian Arabs killing Jews, Turks killing Greeks, and every other ethnic and political strife that occurs around the world and throughout history happening within our borders. How is it that in America an Arabic family from Palestine can live next door to a Jewish family without mayhem, or an ethnic Japanese can marry an ethnic Korean and no one has a problem with that? It’s because of our identity as Americans; an identity that comes from more than simply living within the borders of the same country.

In the military, there are certain “rituals” that have existed for probably as long as there have been professional armies. These rituals are designed to bond soldiers together. In our military, basic training is the “melting pot” that begins this process. Trainees are given a very short haircut, issued a uniform, and are taught the rules of military customs and courtesies. They participate in everything as a group. They do physical training (PT) as a group. They are taught to march, shoot, and eat as a group. This builds unit cohesion, a necessary attribute to survival and success in combat. This builds identity – identification with a group, in this case, the American military.

This identity builds strength. It is this sense of identity that causes one to press forward under fire in an environment where all your senses are telling you to flee, because you don’t want to be the one to let down your buddies. It is this sense of identity that causes one to risk all to save a comrade in arms because you don’t leave your brothers and sisters behind. It’s this sense of identity that allows a unit to take 70% casualties (unheard of in most armies in history) and still achieve its objective, because “Marines never retreat” and you don’t want to be part of the first unit in the history of the Marine Corps to do so.

America’s strength is in its identity as well. Where does this identity come from? It comes from a common language, a common culture, a common understanding of the history, goals, and reasons why this nation was founded. It doesn’t mean that America is perfect; that nothing we ever do is wrong, or that we can’t do better. America is made up of people, and frequently we don’t live up to the high ideals of our founders, who were, themselves human and had their own faults. But it does mean that we know what those ideals are, hold them in high esteem, and strive ourselves to carry the torch forward.

This is why historically, in order to become an American citizen, one was required to learn English, American History, the principles of American government, and American culture. It wasn’t because there was anything wrong with where you came from, or your previous language, or culture. It was because this process built your identity as a citizen of the United States of America, and not your country of birth. It cemented the process of establishing your new loyalties and provided you with the basic toolset you needed to become successful in American society. It is what enabled you to live next door to that person that perhaps you would have lived in fear of, fought, or hated back in your old country, because they had been through the same process and were now, too, Americans.

And when war came, it gave you a reason to fight for this new country which was now your home. A country, particularly a “Frankenstein’s monster” one such as ours, cobbled together out of peoples from every corner of the globe, must have a national identity if it is to survive.

That is why I find the idea that we no longer need to defend our borders, that it is unimportant that our citizens speak English, that it is perfectly acceptable for our country to be multi-lingual and multi-cultural, and that these are good things, to be extremely frightening when actually put into practice as government policy. Historically, countries that behave this way do not survive. They are either overrun from outside or dissolve from within, and their demise is seldom pleasant for their inhabitants. Philosophical discussions in academia are fine. Write all the scholarly papers on these topics that you want. But don’t sacrifice the future of my children and my country on the altar of your desire for social experimentation!

America is strong because its citizens identify themselves as Americans and this identity as an American means pretty much the same thing to all Americans. If we ever lose this, we will cease to be America, and will become instead, just one more failed nation on the ash heap of history.

Illegal immigrants are only doing jobs that Americans refuse to do. This one, unfortunately, is not limited to liberals. I hear this one all the time. If I hear it from my President once more, I think I will set my hair on fire.

Illegal immigrants are not doing jobs Americans refuse to do, they are doing jobs that Americans refuse to do at the pay scales and living conditions that illegals are willing to accept. And businesses are employing illegals instead of Americans because illegals are willing to accept those wages, which are higher than they could get in their home countries, in order to get the job.

So whereas the American worker desires to live in an apartment or home, and requires a wage commensurate with that desire, the illegal, who may also desire to live the same way, is willing to live in a shack, or with multiple families occupying the same apartment or home and sharing the rent, and therefore is willing to accept a lower wage for the same job. All things being equal, what do you expect businesses to do in this situation? As was evidenced in the Hurricane Katrina cleanup, many elect to pay the illegal $6/hr cash, vice paying the American $10/hr, along with Social Security matching, unemployment insurance contributions, and various other drag-along costs associated with paying a legal US citizen or immigrant.

So Democrats, seeking to secure the loyalty (and vote) of the ever-growing Hispanic population in this country, spout this line, and the Republicans, hoping to transfer some of that loyalty to themselves, and also hoping to ingratiate the businesses that employ illegals, spout the same line as well. Both sides, in apparent “unity” for completely different reasons, are acting in their own self-interest, to the detriment of the country.

So what else is new? Let's move on from phrases to words.

Homophobia. This word comes from two roots. The Greek Homo – which means “the same”, as in homogeneous, and homogenize; and the Greek Phobia – which means “fear, terror, or hatred”. So logically, this word means “fear, terror, or hatred of something that is the same”, or “fear of sameness”. Of course what this word, which was coined by the left, means in today’s society is “fear, terror, or hatred of homosexuals”.

To understand the derivation of the word, one has to understand that the term “homo” here is not used in its classical sense, as derived from the Greek illustrated above, but rather from the slang term “homo”, a shortened form of the word homosexual (from the Greek, meaning “same sex”) itself, used as a term of derision by those who are not homosexual against those who are. It is interesting to note that if you or I were to call a homosexual a “homo” this would be an example of “homophobic” behavior, but using the derisive slang term in the creation of the term “homophobic” itself, is OK. Yet another example that quirky liberal mindset that says that it is bad for you to use a pejorative term in connection with a minority group (and everyone is a minority group, except white Anglo-Saxon protestant men) unless you yourself belong to that minority group (or are a card carrying liberal), in which case it is merely playful banter.

To a liberal of course, the real meaning of the word homophobia is “anyone who professes any belief concerning homosexuals which does not embrace the liberal agenda regarding homosexuals”. That is, if you don’t fully accept the homosexual lifestyle as equally good and valid (if not more so) than your own heterosexual lifestyle, then you are a homophobe. How do I know that this is what they believe? Because this is the way they behave. Thus, when it comes to any disagreement regarding homosexuals, there can, by definition, be no debate. You don’t “disagree”; you live in fear, terror, or hatred.

Tolerance. This is a word that used to mean “the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others”. “I might disagree with you, but I respect your right to hold that position”. To a liberal, this is simply unacceptable; you must not only respect the person’s right to hold that position or belief, but in addition, you must completely agree with that position and its acceptability in the greater scheme of things. You cannot disagree. For example, to a liberal it isn’t enough that I respect the right of a person to hold an atheistic world view, I must also be in agreement that their view of things is equally valid as my own. If they object to a religious display, I must of course, in deference to them, remove it. If they assert that those who believe in God are superstitious, intolerant, uneducated religious bigots, I must not disagree, lest I be labeled a superstitious, intolerant, uneducated religious bigot. Again, how do I know that this is the liberal viewpoint? Because this is the way they behave.

You will note that this is not a two-way street; it is OK for liberals to be intolerant of conservative views. This is because to the liberal, their worldview is the “correct” one. Therefore, by definition this is not considered intolerance. They are simply responding appropriately to a hate-monger.

Rational people cannot disagree with liberal positions, because to a liberal, disagreement with liberal positions is not rational. Therefore, conservatives, who disagree with liberal positions, are irrational and their positions are by definition irrational and “phobic”.

Hate-monger. Having used the word above, exactly what is a hate-monger. I did a Google search on the word, and got over 55,000 hits. Obviously, I did not check each and every one! I did check the first 4-5 pages of hits however. I found many examples of the usage of the word, and lots of personal definitions, but no “official” definitions.

I did notice an interesting trend though. It seems that by a pretty strong majority, most “hate-mongers” are described as right-wing, conservative, Judeo-Christian, and/or Republican. It is extremely difficult to find the term associated with a left-wing, liberal, non-Judeo-Christian or Democrat. This would seem to indicate to me that the word is another of those coined by the left to describe someone who disagrees with a particular liberal position. Indeed, seldom have I heard this type of language used by a conservative to describe a liberal.

It runs in the same vein as the term “homophobia” described above. If you don’t like what I do, then you must be afraid of or hate what I do. If you disagree with what I say then you must hate what I say, and by extension, me as well; you are a hate-monger for disagreeing, and when you make your disagreement verbal, you are “spewing hatred”.

Thus, a “hate-monger” can be defined as someone who disagrees with a liberal about something. The problem with using words this way is that it debases the language. What do you call a real, genuine hate-monger then, if you routinely use the word to simply mean someone who disagrees with my position? Fortunately, English is very flexible, and there are a number of words that can be used whose meaning has not yet been debased.

Once again, this is an example of a primary ingredient of left-liberal discourse - when you run out of arguments, sling mud.

Divisive. This one is easy. In today’s left-liberal Democrat political-speak, it simply means to disagree. As in, if you disagree with my position on whatever it may be, then you are being divisive. As with the other words described above, it is easy to earmark this as a term of the Democrat left. You don’t typically hear it spoken by Republicans or conservatives when describing Democrats or liberals.

Democrats like to play the “bi-partisan” game. Everything should have bi-partisan support. If you are not acting in a bi-partisan manner, you are being divisive. After all, this is what the American people want; for their government to put aside “partisan bickering” and move forward in lock-step for the betterment of the country as a whole. It all sounds very grand, until you realize that what the Democrat Liberals mean by “bi-partisan” is agreement with their agenda. It does not mean compromise with the right. Bi-partisanship is not a two-way street. It most assuredly does not include Democrats agreeing with anything in the Republican or conservative agenda. Ask Joe Leiberman. As Howard Dean has so succinctly put it, “we are the opposition party; we oppose”.

It’s an interesting game, whereby those not in power attempt to coerce those who are in power to follow their game plan instead of their own. How is this done? By labeling any attempt by the Republicans to do anything counter to what the Democrats call for as “divisive”. And the funny part about it is that the Republicans can’t win in this game. If they were to turn around and actually do what the Democrats claim must be done, in the spirit of “bi-partisanship”, they will accrue no credit. The Dems will either move on to a completely different issue (while taking credit for what the Republicans have done), or will spin a complete 180 and claim that the new bi-partisan support the Republicans are now displaying is in fact, a further example of “divisiveness”, as they swing their own position hard about.

Dems and Libs have no problem with arguing both sides of a proposition. All they need do is sow enough confusion to make the opposition look bad in the press (an easy thing to do when the majority of the press supports their side), and count on you to not remember they spoke out of both sides of their mouth when it comes time for elections. It’s an easy bet, as most Americans don’t pay much attention to politics until right before an election anyway, if then.

Bi-partisan support is nice, and it is necessary when it comes to certain issues, such as defending the nation. But to suggest that everything that happens in government must have bi-partisan support is ludicrous. Were such the case, there would be no reason to actually have separate political parties, with differing ideas on what should be done and how to accomplish the things we do. While this may sound great if it is your particular set of ideas that are moving forward, it is not so great if the ideas being followed are diametrically opposed to yours. And what if they are flat wrong? Is that ok, as long as the solution is “bi-partisan” and not “divisive”?

It’s enough to make my head explode. And more than enough for one article, don’t you think? These things can only be taken in small doses, and I think I have been at it rather too long as it is. So I think I will end my homophobic, hate-mongering, intolerant and divisive diatribe at this point and take a break. (It must be so, by definition as I am, after all, a conservative.) At least I don’t have to worry about my column being taken over by an illegal immigrant. There are some jobs even illegals won’t do; it’s hard to work for less when the job pays nothing to start with.