We need some new words

Obviously, from reading and listening, there is an irrationalsim to political and ethical debate.  Alisdair McIntyre says it all in the opening paragraphs of After Virtue, so I won't try to say it again.  But it's pretty clear that  there's a twisted mix of assertions, principles, and often what seem like incompatible modes of argument all essentially being used at once.  One example of all this, I've always thought, is the meaninglessness of terms like 'liberal', 'conservative', 'republican' and 'democrat'.

But now I see it a little differently.  My present hypothesis is that the confusion surrounding the above four words is not merely an example, or a symptom.  It is that our continued use of the above words is itself the cause of the entire mess. 

There are two problems with the four political descriptors 'liberal', 'conservative', 'republican' and 'democrat'.   The first is that the ideological commitments of the parties to which we attach the names 'republican' and 'democrat' have shifted dramatically through US history.   So there's no clear mapping of descriptors 'liberal' and 'conservative' to the historic goals of either major political party.

What makes it worse though is that all four terms strongly evoke other concepts via association.  This is the second fundamental problem; these related concepts are at this point related more nominally than they are semantically.

'Conservative' evokes 'conservation', and conservation of scarce resources is a good thing these days, right?

'Democrat' evokes 'democracy'.  I think a lot of folks would probably prefer democracy to alternatives like dictatorship or theocracy.

'Republican' evokes 'republic', which just has a nice ring to it.

And the worst offender of them all: 'liberal'.   This word evokes both modern "social liberalism" (with a progressive basis, commitment to social justice, civil rights, health care and public education) and 18th century "classical liberalism" (which is more about limited government, the rule of law and freedom of the individual, and shares a lot of ideological ground with what we now understand 'libertarianism' and 'anarchism' to denote).

Note 1:  The difference between classical and modern liberalism could be investigated much further.  Perhaps they aren't that different after all.  It comes down to what one views as the conditions of freedom,  it seems.  

Note 2:  Whether anarchism shares with classical liberalism a respect for the rule of law is also debatable, since it seems contradictory to value the rule of law while simultaneously devaluing authority, rejecting hierarchy and questioning all institutions.

So, I think we need to put these four terms to rest and find new ones.  New descriptors.   The old ones are blinding us, rendering us passive.  We are snared by vague, misleading terminology.  I just read a piece by the late Vaclav Havel  about the power of words.  He reminded us that as much as they can enlighten they can mislead and confuse.

Difficult as it is, we need to speak about what is, not what we've been taught to see.