The following is a helpful guide to terms in common use in the United States. Their public meanings have almost nothing to do with what these terms have come to mean. A corrective is needed, including a few terms that should be in use but are not, yet.
Craig Chalquist
Chalquist.com
July 4, 2026
American Dream: the programmed delusion that having a corporate job and buying a house guarantee any kind of future security.
American exceptionalism: group narcissism, with one's nation as the idol. Flagolatry. Emerson was referring to it when he wrote, "Patriotism is balderdash." He was in favor of actually loving the land.
Bully pulpit: the presidential platform in which the President speaks directly to the people. Eradicated in 2016 by authoritarian politics in cahoots with social media.
Checks and balances: the charming notion that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches (for example) of government prevent one another from dangerous actions. Checks and balances tend to dissolve when all three branches are in someone's pocket.
Christian Nationalism: a form of fascistic mass hatred in which easily led true believers are made to accept anti-values in complete opposition to the Christianity they say they profess. The antithesis of what Jesus actually taught.
Democracy: something we always thought was a good idea and said was a good idea but never tried to implement for everyone.
Democratic Party: an elitist organization dedicated to seizing political defeat from the jaws of victory. A circular firing squad. Its capacity for adaptation is aptly symbolized by its emblematic animal: the donkey.
Doing your research: looking up opinions that reinforce your own while disbelieving hard evidence and pretending to be a critical thinker. "You know, in high school if you didn't believe in science or history it was just called failing." - Michelle Wolf.
Dumbocracy: when the uneducated vote away their rights while heaping abuse on anyone who warns them not to. "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - HL Mencken.
Electoral college: a workaround institution to preserve slavery as a status quo while curbing the power of the popular vote.
Flat Earthers: uneducated non-travelers. Historically, no one believed the Earth flat until religion made them., and not even the dumbest sailor ever believed that a port getting lower in the distance must be sinking into the sea.
Freedumb: 1. Believing you and everyone else are somehow freer because your candidate won an election. 2. A long tradition of US anti-intellectualism. 3. Believing that your rights override everyone else's, a psychology normally referred to as narcissism.
Free press: something often discussed but never seen in the United States, land of self-censorship and corporate control.
Hypocrisy: In the US, hypocrisy is not an error but a dominant style of life in which you daily profess something beneficial or noble while performing its harmful opposite.
ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement): what Ku Klux Klansmen do when they aren't burning crosses.
Immigrant: someone who risks life and home and health to contribute fiscally and culturally to US society and is thanked for it by being harassed, demonized, and deported.
Independence: a political stance of freedom from control that vanished about twenty years after the Revolution and hasn't been seen since. Nevertheless, Americans still celebrate it.
Liberty: the juvenile fantasy that you should be able to do whatever you want regardless of how it impacts other people. Spreading lethal infections that maim and kill your fellow citizens because you refuse to mask, for example. See "Freedumb."
Pelosing: pushing members of your own party downhill, as the Democrats have done with members of their own party who strive for more than Republican Light business-as-usual.
Republican Party: a flag-waving mafia doing its best to wipe out whatever of democracy, tolerance, diversity, and representative government still remain anywhere. Its elephant tries to stampede every room even while touting hands-off governance.
Second Amendment: a modification to the US Constitution intended to preserve the right of citizens to protect themselves by forming militias, but since then warped into making legal ownership of high-powered military weapons that did not exist in 1791, when people owned muskets and one-shot dueling pistols.
Statue of Liberty: a gift from France intended to celebrate the spirit of freedom in the US. The poem on it by Emma Lazarus calls it "Mother of Exiles" and gives it a voice: "Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
We The People: common persons who could take charge if they ever came to consciousness of themselves. Those whom political parties try to divide to keep them from ever recognizing their immense power to make real and lasting change once they organize.