Semantics

"My words mean just what I choose them to mean, neither more nor less." -- Humpty Dumpty

"A rose is a rose is a rose." -- Gertrude Stein

   Words can sound good but mean little, especially when used in marketing or politics. Or they can mean much, depending on who is using them. If both sides of a position or issue use the same words to refer to the same concepts or ideas, even as they have different interpretations of those concepts, the words lose meaning.
   For example, if both Libertarians and Progressives, Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats, Corporate and Labor advocates all use words like "freedom" and "liberty," what do these words really mean if their users have so vehemently differing views?
   "Patriotism" is another. Does it mean unquestioning obedience to a government, or does it carry the obligation to criticize that government when one disagrees?
   Conservatives take "freedom" to mean the ability to do whatever is right for them, without government interference. To them, something like a minimum wage law blocks their freedom to pay as little to workers as they may, and the law interferes with the free market capitalist system. Workers, too, they say, lose their right to accept lower wages in order to compete for jobs in the free market.
   Conversely, activists claim the right to organize a labor union, and government may try to interfere with their freedom of collective bargaining. Unions insist they must bargain collectively to negotiate better wages, since an individual worker is powerless against a larger, more tightly organized company.
   Run through a list of organizations with the words "freedom" and "liberty" in their titles, and it can be hard to tell which are right-wing conservative and which are left-wing liberal, without a careful reading of the text of their documents.
   Political rhetoric, too, is filled with buzzwords appealing to the emotions of listeners rather than to the thinking power of the audience. From Barry Goldwater's slogan, "In your heart you know he's right" to Barack Obama's "Yes, we can," political campaigns are carefully marketed to voters and demographic segments much as advertisers select words and phrases most likely to appeal.
   The thing to do, however, is to examine more closely the words and their meanings, if any. The slogan, "In your heart, you know he's right" suggests that voters make their choices from emotion, not from thought. And the more recent Obama slogan, "Forward!" suggests ... what?
   Politicians also use the words "freedom" and "liberty" to justify their intervention in the activities of other nations, maintaining they will bring these concepts to places where the residents supposedly don't have them. Whether they do or not is immaterial; the marketing is used to enlist home support for their otherwise undefined goals, as if using the buzzwords is definition enough.