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**DECEMBER 15, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Liberals With Tin Ears

We need to get a lot better at political language.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the coinage "Latinx,"
which violates the rules of Spanish grammar, and is rejected by 98
percent of Hispanic Americans polled. Our friend and former colleague
Matt Yglesias, who is of both Latino and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, has
written a very astute essay
suggesting that the imposition of "Latinx" by well-meaning white lefties
doesn't explain most of the Democrats' problems with the Hispanic
vote, but it sure doesn't help.

Not to beat a dead

**caballo**, but imagine if earnest progressive wannabe allies came up
with must-use terms for Blacks, Jews, or Asian Americans rejected by
those groups themselves. I'd like to expand the discussion to other
instances of liberal tin ears. Here are three more self-defeating terms
that should be retired.

Safety Net. This widely used synonym for social insurance is
metaphorically and politically wrong. A safety net catches you when you
fall off a high wire. It suggests something for losers and unfortunates
rather than universal social income that binds us all together.

Everyone gets sick. Why is universal health insurance part of a "safety
net"? Likewise universal child care or paid family leave. Nobody wants
to get tangled in a net (which describes means-tested programs all too
well).

The term "social income" is more widely used in Britain, but it captures
the idea exactly-a form of income that everyone gets as citizens. So
let's retire "safety net" in favor of "social income," a usage that
also subtly makes the case for universalism and solidarity rather than
means tests. If memory serves, we Americans have gotten other language
from the English.

Entitlements.

****If any term is even more self-defeating than "safety net," it's
"entitlement." This is a case of a technical budget term passing into
the general language. But "entitlement" is evocatively wrong.

The word "entitled" has come to describe an obnoxious person who claims
privileges that are excessive or undeserved. Sheesh, does that describe
Social Security and Medicare? No, but they are described in budget lingo
and more broadly as entitlements.

This usage, suggesting unearned handouts, gives faithless Democrats like
Joe Manchin language to say things like "I don't believe we should
turn our society into an entitlement society." But we surely do want to
become a society with adequate social income.

Union Density. This clunker is a case of academic language being picked
up by journalists and liberals who want to sound with-it. Union density
refers to the proportion of workers who are members of unions, as in
"Union density has declined from 33 percent in 1958 to 13 percent in
2020."

But density evokes stodgy union bureaucracy rather than a spirited
social movement. Who wants to be part of something dense? What's wrong
with the simple word "membership"?

Yes, the media are partly to blame, but progressives can at least model
good usage. The right wing goes all the way to Orwellian in its use of
language. We don't do that, but let's at least avoid linguistic
missteps that make the right's job easier.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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