On BushSpeak / GOP-Speak translation...

This is old-hat, but I think it's worth re-addressing for the new election.  As always, the key battleground between the parties is in the definitions of certain buzzwords which are used to frame various arguments.

The biggest buzzword this millennium so far has been FREEDOM.
It's generally meant by GOP types to mean the freedom FROM entanglement/responsibility - that is, taxes - or any government obligation, really.  It's the sort of freedom a fighter plane has when it has the ability to disengage and fly away from an adversary and abandon them.  Freedom from environmental regulations, etc.

Of course, the people who want to have the ability to abandon the nation/civic life this way are usually the same people who are already ably-served by the free market - i.e. the people with money.  

They don't need public schools, they can afford private ones - they don't need television - they can afford cable, they don't need fair housing laws, they own their homes in gated communities.  They don't need public transportation - they have cars.  And they don't care about health care because they're fully insured.  The government is a burden on their free-market success-story..(or their fantasy to that effect.)

That's the straight GOP line. Bush, being the worst of them, perverts almost all of his buzzwords even more.  In his language, Freedom translates almost directly into 'POWER'.  When he says freedom, really it's a dog-whistle to dimwit conservatives that he's going to go into a foreign society and transform those people with American 'Freedom'(TM) - which means they will fall into the American sphere-of-influence and market-economics based on the dollar (NOT the Yen or the Euro) .. Halliburton and Exxon will go in and build their oil-infrastructure. The new free citizen's ability to make personal/economic/political decisions is empowerment only as much as it aligns with our intentions for them.  Meanwhile the GOP/Neocon-voters get to fantasize that their doing good for the world, while also secretly fantasizing about Pax Americana - improving America's superpower status into the next century.

If the defacto colonies,(Iraq) direct their freedom the wrong way, they become bad elements, and then 'militias' or insurgents.. depending on what they do. The gray area looms large, depending on how loyal they are to our favored Green-zone government.

Of course I oversimplify, but it's been clear for years that Bush has been a power-hungry nutcase, and 'freedom' is his not-very-nuanced rally-cry for jamming his version of the American dream - and indirectly, American power, into every corner of the earth - every corner with oil, anyway.  

Of course he's assumed that if they're democracies, they'll vote along with America's interests, which is a complete fantasy.  The West Bank voted for Hamas.. The Iranian wingnuts over there were elected fairly - but that's another story.

The alternate (Democratic) definition of Freedom, is  - Freedom of Opportunity - .  

This definition is not the freedom FROM personal entanglement/responsibility, but is instead a concept where Freedom is the freedom to reach one's fullest potential, and that requires an activist government.  The underlying assumption here is that that the market is necessary but often flawed in various ways, and people may not meet their potential based only on free-market machinations. They need help, either through government-mandated education to develop skills, or market-regulation to break up trusts, or plan cities/transport, regulate safety, provide for healthcare and education etc.

Clearly both versions of freedom are true some of the time depending on the situation.  One can have too much obligation (taxes) or too little.  It's a ying-yang thing.

We'll need to carefully monitor what the GOP candidates say, and have a hair-trigger response ready for type of buzz-word BS that Bush has used.  Because they're going to attempt to set up the same kind of double-meanings along similar lines to the Bush/Rove paradigm to shape the debate.  If they win this framing argument, they'll win the presidency.  Time will tell.