Reply #93: I believe that the language argument is important

[Lyric]

It's not a "street term", it's a LEGAL term, and it will continue to appear as such whenever there are government documents referencing it. Trying to pretend that the word "entitlement" isn't there when any Freeper with Google can see that it IS is pointless. The only way to truly protect Social Security from those who want to see it dismantled is to reclaim the word "entitlement" and educate people about what it truly means. Otherwise, you lose the argument every time a right-winger Googles it, finds the government calling it an "entitlement" on official documents, and proceeds to ignore everything you tried to tell them.

It really IS that important to win the language battle. Frankly, the right-wing alone is not solely responsible for this problem. Too many Democrats sat there and let the right-wing redefine welfare as an evil, ugly thing, and said nary a word in opposition because they cared more about re-election than about doing the right thing. Well that poor decision is now coming back to bite everyone in the ass. Trying to save Social Security's reputation without winning the language battle is like trying to win the evolution v. creationism in schools battle without first explaining that the scientific definition of "theory" is NOT the same thing as the "common definition".

It just doesn't work.