A defining characteristic of those on the political left is their ever-shifting language. Nothing is as it seems, and their verbiage is forever changing as people figure out what they stand for. Even the moniker for their movement has transformed from communist to socialist to liberal to progressive and is moving back to socialist. The recent pledge by some liberal news outlets to start pushing the term "climate emergency" in place of the previous environmental fear phrases "climate change," "climate disruption" and "global warming" is another example of their never-ending search for a label that will allow them to accomplish their goals before enough people realize what they are talking about.
Other examples include "common-sense gun laws" (a euphemism for banning guns), "pay their fair share" (increasing taxes) and "affordable health care" (socialized medicine). The left has spent decades devising vague catch phrases that sound great to the uninformed and their willing accomplices in the media, but are simply euphemisms for things they could never get passed if they were honest. For example, the claim of affordable health care is how it became the federal government's business if you use tobacco or have a firearm in your home.
We have seen this all-powerful intrusion on steroids over the past year with governments' COVID measures. The government forbidding you from going to work? The government telling you what items you are allowed to buy at the store? The government ordering you to take medicine? These massive expansions of government power over the smallest details of Americans' lives is exactly the point of broad but vague manipulation of the language of public policy as a means to disguise political power grabs.
Since the change in administration, the left has found its new version of "affordable health care." Every liberal initiative is now promoted under the pretext of "infrastructure." In addition to roads and bridges one would expect in an infrastructure spending bill, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., contends mandatory child care and paid time off work are "infrastructure". Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says revamping America's immigration laws to allow a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens could be considered infrastructure. Other big-government goodies stuffed under the new catch-all phrase "infrastructure" include...
