A few years ago the Centers for Disease Control told every doctor in America to stop saying “pregnant women.” The new mandated term was “pregnant people.” Biological women were quietly erased from their own role because a small group of activists demanded it. Nothing about pregnancy changed, and nothing about biology, reproduction, or the baby changed. Only the dictionary did.

That one example is not an accident; it is their method. It follows the same playbook we see on issue after issue.

1. Create a new, soft phrase that hides what is actually happening.

2. Pressure newspapers, schools, corporations, and government agencies to adopt it.

3. Declare the original, plain-English term hateful, and paint anyone who uses it as a bigot.

By the time those three steps are complete, the debate is over before it even starts. You cannot describe your position without being labeled extreme.

The pattern becomes obvious when you place the examples side by side. This is the chart I show people when they still think this is about being “polite.”

Every phrase in the middle column sounds medical or compassionate. Every description in the right-hand column turns normal people into a moral offenders.

Look at an example that should worry every parent in Alaska.

A fifteen-year-old girl can walk into certain clinics in some states, receive puberty blockers after one or two visits, be prescribed testosterone, and later undergo elective double mastectomy, all before she is old enough to vote. Every insurance form and even the former president and vice-president call this sequence “gender-affirming care.” But if you, should describe those same events truthfully, such as giving minors off-label drugs and removing healthy organs, you are labeled the extremist. The procedures did not change. Only the label did.

The same vocabulary trick protects late-term abortion. No politician campaigns on expanding third-trimester abortion, instead they call it “reproductive healthcare.” A man who enters the country illegally is no longer illegal, he is “undocumented,” as if the issue were merely paperwork and not breaking the law. Cities on fire in 2020 became “mostly peaceful protests,” even as the flames light the reporter’s face. Meanwhile, conservative rallies become insurrections, and simply admitting to being a Christian is enough to make one a “religionista.” A politician who believes America was founded as a Christian nation becomes a “Christian Nationalist” as if agreeing with our founding fathers, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution is some sort of horrible description.

And here is where the language trap tightens. If you define a woman by biology, you are labeled a “TERF: (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist). Most Alaskans had never heard the term until activists weaponized it to silence anyone who believes gender is rooted in biology instead of ideology. You do not need to be a radical feminist to earn the title. You only need to tell the truth and the progressives despise you.

These language games are not confined to national issues. They are at work right here in Alaska.

• When the Anchorage School District raises taxes, cuts classes, and still runs deficits, the problem is never “mismanagement.” It becomes a “structural funding challenge,” a phrase designed to shift blame from decisions to destiny.

• When the federal government pressures Alaska to surrender permitting authority under Section 404, it is sold as “streamlined oversight,” not what it really is, a federal takeover that slows development and ignores local knowledge.

• When the Mat-Su outperforms Anchorage in academics, the success of charter schools is dismissed as “selective enrollment,” instead of what it is, parents choosing better options for their kids.

• Federal managers and NOAA call the waste of perfectly good fish “bycatch,” a term that makes it sound like a harmless accounting error. It is not harmless. Regulated or Dead Discharge, a wasted resource, wasted opportunity, and wasted income for Alaska families who depend on those stocks. Millions of pounds of protein essential to Alaskans and the Alaska way of life, just thrown away.

These are not small disputes about style. They are political weapons that, when conservatives or Republicans use them, are called “written violence,” another term weaponized by the liberal media and their talking heads. The side that controls the vocabulary seizes the moral high ground before the first fact is spoken. Conservatives must recognize this tactic and take the narrative back.

And the process never stops. The approved term shifts the moment it becomes understood by conservatives. Say “gay” instead of the latest acronym and you are outdated. Use “man” and “woman” the way every culture has for thousands of years and is defined in the bible as well as millions of medical and scientific texts, and you become the villain of the week. Yesterday’s ally becomes tomorrow’s offender, and the only safe position becomes quiet surrender.

Controlling the dictionary is more powerful than controlling Congress, because it decides who sounds reasonable before a single vote is cast.

When did the American people vote to hand that power to unelected editors, activists, and bureaucrats?

We did not. It was taken while we were busy debating policy in the old language and fighting each other (and labelling each other RINO), over process instead of results.

The way back is simple, even if it requires courage. Speak plainly. Call things what they are. Do not give them the narrative. A conservative should never reference “pro-choice” – (unless talking about the “choice” of keeping ones pants on). If enough of us do it at once, the spell breaks, because no style guide can turn millions of normal Americans into villains for telling the truth.

The dictionary is not neutral, and it will not be neutral again until we make it so.

Let us start today.

Originally published on Substack: https://kevinjmccabe.substack.com/p/the-intellectual-dishonesty-of-progressives