Loaded language and the unspoken opposite

Every political label delivers its opposite silently.

If I'm pro-choice, you're anti-choice. If I'm pro-life, you're pro-death. If I'm a "person of color" you're either a colorless person or, if "colored," a traitor to your, um, color. If I'm pro-immigrant, you're anti-immigrant, even if you're only anti-illegal immigrant, even if you're really only against the ultrarich who benefit from illegal alien labor.

I don't have to say it in so many words. It's a stealth attack on the other side's honor and integrity--and it also preloads the argument in favor of your side's loaded questions and proposals.

These labels extend to dressing up bills and initiatives with similarly loaded terms. If my bill is called "No child left behind" then you want to leave children behind.

The only honest response is to not allow your opponent to use these terms that stack the deck, even if those terms are now in common parlance. "Master race" was in common parlance in Germany in the 1930s. That didn't make it right. Moreover, you have to give up whatever advantage you may get from using your own side's loaded words. If you do feel you must use some of these loaded terms, tack "so-called" in front of them like Malcolm X did.

This use of loaded terms is so common, so pervasive, that it's tempting--really, really, tempting--to just give in. All I can say to that is it's actually fun to challenge them all the time--as long as you show your willingness to give up your side's loaded terms as well.

One caveat: not all political terms are loaded, but most are. You could argue that "pro-choice" and it's unspoken antonym "anti-choice" are accurate and thus defensible. But an anti-abortion activist would argue that you're against the "unborn child" having a choice. But then you can challenge "unborn child" which is an oxymoron actually, since if a fetus gets "born" too soon you just get a dead fetus, not a born child. That's what a "miscarriage" is. Which is another loaded term, by the way, because there's nothing "mis-" about it. It's usually a woman spontaneously aborting a nonviable fetus. Period.

I would defend "illegal alien." It's the legal term, for one thing. And its antonym is "legal alien," the correct term for someone who's in this country legally. And that isn't pejorative. So this one doesn't fit the model of a term that carries a stealth load of propaganda against the other side.