What does that word even mean?

Democracy depends on using words well.

On the Fourth of July, I sat with some of my adult family members on the back porch of a rented house in the boonies of south Georgia. The air was practically dripping, and so many warty, brown toads hopped between our flip-flopped feet that we were compelled to prop our heels high on the table, out of reach. Snakes were an ever-present threat, too, but it was all worth it because in the heavy, navy darkness behind us, we could see stars.

We’d set off a few fireworks from the boat dock earlier in the evening, which elicited a lackluster “Is that it?” from our children. We’d put everyone to bed and made a second round of mojitos using spearmint from the gallon-sized bag of it I’d brought in a cooler from home. We’d played a few rounds of Code Names. And we were entering the portion of the evening when anything goes, conversation-wise, because a couple mojitos had made us all very, very smart.

Yep, that’s it.

The topic was liberalism.

Two of us studied linguistics in grad school and one of us history, so the convos tend to skew nerdy. We debated the meaning of the word liberalism, its origins, how it was once used and is used now.

We decided (no surprise here) the word itself is… a mess.

What has happened to liberalism happens often with big-concept terms: a word lasts hundreds of years, undergoing alterations and iterations as the world changes around it, until finally it has meant so many things that it means nothing at all.

The word “liberal” is problematic from the jump; it is too big. But generally it means broad-minded, not bound by orthodoxy. It comes from the word “free” and is associated with tolerance. Liberalism is, generally, a live-and-let-live approach to life in a society.

Lots of folks who may feel compelled to call themselves Republicans (for, I’d argue, geographic reasons) are liberal by way of personality. (See Jon Haidt.) But liberalism is a trait (and term) that has come to be associated with the Democratic party.

As soon as we enter the political arena, the word gets even heavier. The denotation may be consistent, but the connotations are ENDLESS. The word is asked to bear more weight than its letters can withstand. There’s classical and new liberalism, Locke’s liberalism and Smith’s. There’s a California liberal and then a South Carolina one. Progressives and lefties can be (and often are) illiberal.

Originally, I wanted to write about the word itself. But to do that with precision would take weeks. Too much has been written—over centuries—about the evolution of the ideology and its many practical manifestations. Also, I think you would be bored.

We need words to be containers for concepts; it’s the only way to communicate. But as a word takes on more and more meaning, it becomes an insufficient container, like pouring more and more water into a Solo cup. It can only hold so much. Fred is pulling out one definition that existed at one point on the timeline; Sally is pulling out another. Fred brings a slew of associations from his background and experiences; Sally brings her own. Perhaps they are arguing without knowing they are using two different definitions of the same word.

Precision matters. In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell points out that any fight against the abuse of language will always seem quaint and sentimental—a waste of time. But, he argues, if our language is messy, so are our thoughts.

“Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”

A couple decades ago, we humans were handed this giant publishing platform called the internet. We started using more words in more ways, caring less about each one. The upside is, humans are hilarious on the internet. The downside is, humans are careless on the internet. Language has suffered.

And that’s to say nothing of television news.

I am convinced part of our anger toward one another has to do with misunderstanding. I am convinced this is largely because we are using the words given to us by platformed people who don’t care about language (or about us)—people who willfully abuse language as a way to get ratings, or likes, or attention, or money. They are pundits, politicians, and pastors. They are loud. They’re handing us a particular set of words and saying, here, use these, these will do—and we take them and throw them at one another like rocks.

As if we have no other choice. As if we must speak to one another the way the loud and powerful speak to us. In the novel 1984, “the regime” issues new editions of the official dictionary, removing words from it one by one. Their goal in reducing the people’s acceptable language options is to limit their ability to think.

We aren’t asking the questions we should be. When we are lazy with words, as when we are lazy with anything, we cause harm. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre writes,

“Caring for language is a moral issue. Caring for one another is not entirely separable from caring for words. Words are entrusted to us as equipment for our life together, to help us survive, guide, and nourish one another.”

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But I don’t have weeks to study the evolution of liberalism, and neither do you. I am neither a political scientist nor a historian nor a philosopher. I have to pick my kids up from camp in an hour.

So, if spending weeks properly defining liberalism isn’t the answer, what is the answer? What does it mean to use words well?

It means specificity.

Usually, big broad terms cause confusion. For example: Am I, the author of this Substack, “a liberal”?

Well, how long do you have?? I could write a whole book on the various implications of being “bound by orthodoxy.” The word “free” has at least googleplex definitions. My voting record is all over the place. And if you want to talk religion, well, buckle up. I am one person’s definition of a liberal and perhaps another person’s definition of a conservative.

So maybe words like “liberal” aren’t so useful. Also other “category” and “label” words like conservative, progressive, spiritual, religious, orthodox, right, left.

When I’m tempted to use a concept word, I can get specific instead. “He voted for Trump in 2016” (a fact) means something very different than “He’s an alt-right nationalist” (a generalization that may or may not be a fact).

It means slowness.

It’s worth the extra time it takes to make sure we’re using a word the same way as the person we’re talking to. This is possible in conversation—but impossible when sharing memes on the internet.

Even better, we can be entirely original. In the important book On Tyranny, which I’ve re-read about 15 times now, Timothy Snyder writes, “Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone else is saying.”

In other words, don’t use the language handed to you by people you don’t (or shouldn’t) trust. How would you describe your own affiliations, opinions, and personality? What matters to you, in your own words? Reposting a meme on Facebook is quick and gratifying, but the misunderstandings it encourages endanger democracy.

Snyder writes,

“When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books. The characters in Orwell’s and Bradbury’s books could not do this—you still can.

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None of this is easy for me.

When I’m in conversation about big topics, I can run hot. I’ve thrown my fair share of “rocks” and issued my fair share of apologies (and failed to issue many I should have).

I write and read to train myself in specificity, slowness, and contextualization. Some people care for sheep, or students, or crops. I care for words.

George Orwell also said, “Good prose is like a windowpane.”

We should be able to see straight through it.