Did you even notice the subtle shift in language that Republicans have begun using when referring to the Democratic Party? You see, for Republicans, the noun and the adjective are the same: "Republican." But for Democrats, the noun and the adjective are different.

The problem is, if you're a Republican, talking about the "Democratic" party makes it sound as though that party founded the idea of democracy. It makes it sound as though they are more about democracy than you are. What's a Republican to do?

Manipulate language, of course! In recent speeches, President Bush has taken to calling the party of Democrats the "Democrat party" instead of the gramatically-correct "Democratic" party -- ostensibly because he doesn't want anyone to perceive that the Democrats are more democratic than the Republicans.

The connotation, though, is that the democrats are not the party of Democracy. Republicans have begun using the term pejoratively to describe Democrats -- as though they (the Democrats) didn't believe in democracy.

The evidence comes from Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit organization that analyzes and criticizes the U.S. media. Their analysis:

The ungrammatical conversion of the noun "Democrat" to an adjective was the brainchild of Republican partisans, presumably an attempt to deny the opposing party the claim to being "democratic" -- or in the words of New Yorker magazine senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg, "to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation." In the early 1990s, apparently due largely to the urging of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the use of the word "Democrat" as an adjective became near-universal among Republicans.

Hertzberg argued against the use of the word "Democrat" as an adjective because it was ungrammatical. What would Republican stalwart William F. Buckley, Jr. say? While Buckley is the founder of National Review, he is -- like many old-school Republicans (notably James J. Kilpatrick) -- crazy about proper grammar. Will their love of correct English trump their hatred of Democrats? It appears that, among new-school neo-cons, hatred wins the day.

The word 'fascist' takes on new meaninglessness

In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell argued that the word fascist -- which once had a specific meaning, referring to a dictatorial, hyper-patriotic, militaristic, hyper-capitalist form of government -- no longer had any meaning, as it was bandied about as an insult toward anyone the speaker didn't like. So, too, did "communist" cease to be a description of a centralized economic system, becoming instead an insult hurled at any left-leaning person.

Well, "fascist" is back, thanks to President Bush, Donald "Duck" Rumsfeld, and Vice President Cheney. CNN reports:

President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq.

Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.

[...]

White House aides and outside Republican strategists said the new description is an attempt to more clearly identify the ideology that motivates many organized terrorist groups, representing a shift in emphasis from the general to the specific.

"I think it's an appropriate definition of the war that we're in," said GOP pollster Ed Goeas. "I think it's effective in that it definitively defines the enemy in a way that we can't because they're not in uniforms."

But, again, the word "fascist" is being used incorrectly. Fascism, the governmental system, is defined by Mirriam-Webster as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition." For Ed Goeas to say that a group is "fascist" because it is "not in uniforms" is stupid: fascism is a type of government. Muslim terrorist groups are not governments.

And guess what, NASCAR fans: not all Muslim terrorist groups are the same!

Al-Qaeda, formed in the 1990s, devoted itself to three objectives: (1) getting U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia; (2) destroying Israel; and (3) creating a pan-Islamic movement to destroy the West, if at all possible. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the PLO exist only to destroy Israel, and they are not pan-Islamic movements.

So why lump all Muslim terrorist groups into a poorly-named container called "fascism"? Because it's good P.R. The gum-chewing public knows that "fascism" is bad; it has been ingrained in our culture. So, without any further explanation, the Bush administration can say "terrorists = fascists" and its audience gets the message without any further explanation.