Dictionary of Modern Political Doublespeak

In politics, language is used and abused to further political agendas.  This page is an attempt to contextualize, analyze, and, ideally, improve contemporary political discourse.  The definitions offered here attempt to capture the meaning of their corresponding terms, as those terms are employed in the major media and in leading political circles.

Democracy:  Refers to ‘free’ nations (see definition of freedom).  Regular elections are necessary but not sufficient to democracy.  These elections must be competitive, although they need not be entirely free.  In fact, in most circumstances, they must not be entirely free.  That is, they must exclude candidates who reject ‘freedom’ and outcomes inconsistent with ‘freedom.’

Environmental stewardship:  Protection and/or preservation of resources that cannot be put to use for an economic or public purpose.

Freedom:  Respect for individual rights, the most important of which are the rights of property and contract.  Refers primarily to markets, although is not incompatible with and generally encourages civil liberties as well (e.g. freedom of speech, religion and association). 

Ownership society:  Refers to fiscal policies that would exempt savings and investments from taxation, which transfers some portion the tax burden onto those who do not have savings or investments.

Simplifying the tax code: This refers to movement toward a flat tax, which eliminates progressive taxation, meaning that the wealthy will bear a smaller share of the tax burden.

Terrorism: Formerly referred to violence against nonmilitary targets, by a nonmilitary perpetrators, for the sake of a political goal.  Although this term is highly protean, it seems to refer to any violence perpetrated for a political goal by those outside accepted structures of power.