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Democrats, Lose these Five Words: Part Two
Lose these and win elections!
We have allowed Republicans to set the terms of political discourse, to our detriment. Their language employs images and emotions, rather than facts, to typify social, educational, and political issues. Their cheap slogans mask more nuanced concepts. We will never capture public imagination if we continue to debate using their terms. The more we repeat them, the more we substantiate them. We need to create and employ our own. The second harmful term we need to lose is:
“Entitlements”
Everybody knows what an entitled person is. They are selfish. They demand things they haven’t earned and don’t deserve. They berate the help. They cut the line while we watch them do it. We’ve seen them; we’ve met them; we know them. We despise them.
Do you know who’s not an entitled person? Someone who depends on Social Security as their sole source of income because they are elderly, sick, or the survivor of one who received Social Security benefits. Social Security is not a big basket of free greenbacks flying into your face.
Social Security was created in 1935 because Franklin Roosevelt learned of a retired teacher who lived in a chicken coop. He thought that older people deserved to live in more dignity than that and that it was our collective…
