We seem to live in an Alice in Wonderland world where words have neither intrinsic nor permanent meaning. A word means what I say it means…today. Tomorrow, I might change the definition completely. This non-communication makes me feel that I could literally die. But “literally” doesn’t mean literally but figuratively. Surely, this is a benign example of a malign problem. Maybe our world isn’t as benign as Alice’s. Maybe we’re living in an Orwellian world where Peace means War and Freedom means Slavery.

“Conservative” doesn’t mean today what Barry Goldwater meant when he wrote Conscience of a Conservative. Too many of those representing themselves as Conservatives are neither conservative nor feature a conscience. Today, MAGA represents itself as being Conservative. It isn’t. It’s radical, i.e., it desires to tear our society up from its roots. There is no coherent conservative philosophy to MAGA. It’s about nostalgia for an America where women and minorities knew their place and White Christian men ruled.

Trump calls Democrats Communists. This is not to understand what Communism is or to distinguish it from Fascism. In fact, I’d hold that calling someone (or a group) Communist or Fascist is only to indicate that you despise them and doesn’t imply any real definition or meaning—only an emotion, usually of disdain.

Once upon a time, the Democratic Party was the party of the workingman—blue-collar people (mostly men), people who showered after work, as against the wealthier and more professional and educated Republicans who showered before work. Democrats held the “solid segregationist South.” Republicans represented the Eastern elites. Today, they have performed a Do-Si-Do. The blue-collar workers have swung to the Republicans. The Conservative Southern Democrats have become Republicans. Meanwhile, the Democrats are bleeding union members while retaining union bosses. They are also losing ethnic minorities—mostly men. It may have been a mistake of historic proportions to grant men the franchise.

Today, neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan would be able to get the Republican nomination. Republicans have historically been the “Law and Order” party. I don’t think that that means what they think it means. If you compare indictments of White House staff for the past 50 years, you’ll find Republicans leading the pack by a wide margin. Nixon’s and Trump’s people would outpace the total number of indictments from Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Though, to be fair, Johnson and Clinton contributed some. However, it is rich to hear on Fox that “Biden is the most corrupt president in history.” (Mollie Hemingway on Fox News, May 20, 2024).

Today, historically, “free trade” Republicans impose protectionist tariffs—as do Democrats, but it’s not a traditional Democratic position.  In the ‘60s, the mainstream Democrats reluctantly supported the war, but isolationism was pretty mainstream within the Democratic Party. Republicans supported America as the world’s policeman and our interventions in South Asia and Latin America. Today, the Democrats support aiding Ukraine, while the Republicans have rediscovered their pre-WWII America First isolationism.

Liberals used to support free speech. Conservatives tried to protect our students from challenging left-wing speakers. Today, liberals shout down offensive speech and see it as “violence” that creates an unsafe environment. No! Violence is violence and not a metaphor. Today’s so-called Conservatives don’t know what to do with free speech.

Both sides correctly accuse the other of being “Snowflakes,” unwilling to listen to challenging points of view. Hell, even the ACLU came out against classic free speech. After Charlottesville in 2018, the ACLU changed its almost absolutist support of unbridled free speech to the duty to evaluate the “impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression” before they would even consider taking a First Amendment case (quoted from Foundation for Economic Education). Perhaps no one fully supports uncomfortable speech—from cursing to sexism and on to racism. We delude ourselves into believing that reining in the language changes emotions and practices.

No, I don’t want to hear vulgar slurs of people by race, sexuality, or religion. Neither do I want the European-style bans on words and symbols and a tight definition of hate speech that criminalizes political expression and censors even history. Three weeks ago, the House held that members could not mention that Trump was indicted and on trial. To do so would be to break their code of conduct.

How frightening are words and ideas? Well, the liberals wanted to edit the bad racist language out of Mark Twain, but not rap. (Huh?) Conservatives want to ban books from schools and libraries that mention that some people are gay, some lesbian, and a few were born from the results of sex! Henry Miller meets Mark Twain in library detention.

The words Liberal, Conservative, MAGA, and Progressive have no fixed definitions. They merely mean what some group asserts what they mean. This makes conversation and contracts, agreements, and disputes nearly impossible because we literally (and this time, I mean literally) don’t know what we’re talking about!