Galvanize the Pen

Typological organization helps the mind to make sense of the world around it. With it, we are able to assert that 'all rats are rodents, but not all rodents are rats'. This is an important capability, but has been inappropriately defined by political spinning and rhetoric for too long. It is, essential, a linguistic tactic to persuade how you perceive the government.

'All democrats are liberal and all republicans are conservative' are typological labels commonly held to be true. In news, interviews, debates, and various forums, democrats and republicans proudly boast their titles because they believe in their position fervently (or that it will at least bring them more capital in behaving as such). But this relationship between the party and the title is unique for several reasons.

As mentioned, one can redoubtably claim liberal or conservative ties in association with respects to political affiliations. However, a party member can use that very label as a prejoritive against an opposing member in a disagreement with pugnacious disdain. Popularly, the best response is no response. The two pundits/politicians/reporters/citizens/etc. continue on with the argument, inflamed and without addressing the rather bizarre semantic switch. It is not the turning of a label on the labeled, but the history and definitions behind that makes this grotesquely unique.

The word 'conservative' comes from Latin's conservātīvus, the root of which is conservāre, meaning 'to conserve; to save'. This word is akin to servīre , 'to serve' or servus, 'slave'. It is defined as 'tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions'. Denotatively, 'conservative' views are held to maintain current traditions.

The word 'liberal' comes from Old French, meaning 'befitting the free men, noble, generous'. In English today, liberal is defined as 'favorable to progress or reform', or 'given freely or abundantly'.

Comparing the etymological information of these labels can be perplexing; for Americans asserting that freedom is the most important characteristic of our nation, one would think the choice of labels is unquestionably clear. Even the current administration used 'liberal' in reassuring the American public that we are 'liberators' in Iraq and viewed as such. This conundrum furthers when considering the party names themselves.

The party name 'democrat' comes from 'democracy', the very type of government Americans believe they live under, believe the fight and die for. However, they do not. Americans live under a republic, the root of the party name 'republican'. A democratic nation is defined as having a 'government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system'. Americans live under a republic. A republic nation is defined as a 'state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them'.

To recap: democrats are 'befitting the free men' and have taken the name of the type of government Americans naively convince themselves they live under; republicans are 'disposed to current views' and have taken the name of the true current government of the United States. Another government using the title 'republic' is 'The People's Republic of China', a nation vehemently demonized by the Republican Party as being 'communist'. To quickly digress, communism's disagreeability comes from concerns of the government's high involvement in the financial institutions, such as using taxpayers' money to invest in failing and prominent banks.

The reason why America is divided does not lay within our current political dilemmas, but in the very language used. The American responsibility today is to galvanize the pen as mightier by taking control of the language used against the masses. All democrats and republicans may be liberals and conservatives, respectively. But not all liberals and conservatives are respectively linked.


The true war is not abroad. It is and has been here, and it is for your mind.