THERE IS A SEGMENT, powerful and influential, in today’s society, which I shall refer to here as the Meaning Manipulators, who thrive on redefining certain words the meanings of which were once unmistakably clear. There is nothing random or arbitrary in this process. It is part of a deliberate, organized, orchestrated and concerted effort (yes, a conspiracy, if you will) to advance a specific political agenda, and the words targeted for demolition and reconstruction are words that resonate favorably with most Americans but that represent concepts abhorrent to the Meaning Manipulators and antithetical to their radical political agenda.

One such word is marriage, the meaning of which has been clear throughout history. There is a concept represented by the word – a principle, an institution, that is divine in origin – that is eternal and immutable and will ever remain so no matter how much humans might try to destroy it by mutilating the meaning of the word traditionally used to represent that concept.

The Meaning Manipulators want you to believe that the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a violation of human rights, as though an institution ordained by God could be in violation of God-given rights. The reality is that the Meaning Manipulators’ agenda is not to protect human rights but to destroy the institution of marriage and to destroy religion. I will write more about this in a future article. For the present, I would like to focus on another word that has been targeted for mutilation and transformation by the Meaning Manipulator crowd. That word is PATRIOTISM.

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Granted, the meaning of the word patriotism is not as universally constant as the word marriage. Patriotism has meant different things to different people at different times in different parts of the world. But in the context of the 232-year history of the United States, there hasn’t been much ambiguity about what it meant to be an American Patriot.

Until recently.

Today, there are people who have a very different vision for America’s future than the Founding Fathers had, a very different vision for America than American patriots have had throughout the country’s history. The America those people want to create would be unrecognizable by the architects of our nation, and is not the kind of country I want to leave to my grandchildren.

But the extremists who seek to radically transmute the United States of America from a land of freedom to a socialist state seek to legitimize their agenda by calling it patriotic. They want to do this because they believe that by identifying themselves as patriots they will have more appeal and be more acceptable to the average American citizen. They think we are stupid enough or gullible enough to fall for the ploy. They want to wrest ownership of the word patriotism from those of us who love this country as its founders intended it to be, and to give patriotism a makeover in their own image.

They are the same Meaning Manipulators who want to redefine marriage – as well as family, freedom, life, democracy, and many other foundational American principles – principles they consider archaic. Their strategy is to embrace the words but alter their meanings, thus insidiously subverting and sabotaging traditional American institutions even while they make a pretense of supporting them.

It is a process that has been going on for many years with considerable success, but it is a strategy that succeeds only when we let it – when the rest of us fail to understand clearly ourselves the original meanings of those words, or to appreciate their importance, or when we are indifferent to or acquiescent to the shifts in meaning and therefore fail to reiterate the correct traditional meanings with sufficient force and frequency to render the misuse of the words ineffectual.

So what is the correct meaning of patriotism in the American tradition? Just what – and who – is an American patriot? I will give you my definition: American patriotism is a love of and loyalty to the principles and ideals upon which this nation was founded and a willingness and resolve to defend and uphold those principles and ideal.

But actions, as has been said, speak louder than words. It is not enough for, let us say, a political candidate who wants to be perceived as patriotic to pay lip service to those ideals and principles during campaign speeches. Patriotism is as patriotism does. If, for example, a legislator’s voting record belies his or her campaign rhetoric (yes, surprise, surprise, that actually happens sometimes) and betrays a penchant for supporting legislation that abridges the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution or that weakens the sovereignty of the United States, then what are we to say for that politician’s patriotism? If an elected official usurps authority not granted by the Constitution, what are we to say for that official’s patriotism?

There are those who would have you believe that all political agendas are morally equivalent and, therefore, equally patriotic. That is a preposterous notion. While it is true that no one political party has a monopoly on patriotism, it is equally true that there are some political agendas that are flagrantly unpatriotic. Any agenda that seeks to diminish the God-given, Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of American citizens or to undermine the Constitution itself falls in that category, and there has been a lot of that going around lately. Our basic freedoms have been methodically eroded over the last few decades, and anyone (regardless of party) who has been a party to allowing that to happen has engaged in an unpatriotic act. Patriotism is as patriotism does.