Language shift has produced government worship

Until we recapture the true meaning of elected officials as representative servants, and use our tongues to reinstate that fact, we will suffer the consequences of our own folly

Language shift has produced government worship

Deeper than PC mania that has skewed culture, government role titles have been reconfigured to instill reverence over familiarity. The repetitive wrongful identification of officials has produced a mindset far different from the original intent of government.

All this to say that we’ve inadvertently changed our relationship to government by allowing changes in address to occur. At the top of the list is how we refer to elected officeholders – we’ve fallen into the habit of calling them leaders. Too many of us have a tendency to say that we’re looking for someone to lead in choosing a candidate for high office.

So what? Well, this is what… The shift in language use has conditioned us to forget that we are really seeking capable and articulate servants to take on what we like to call leadership roles. But by misusing status reference we have convinced ourselves that we are no longer the head of government, someone we choose is.

This is upside-down. We’ve swallowed the reconstructed purpose of electing officeholders, for that is what they are… individuals who temporarily occupy an office in order to perform the duty of that office. They do not take a pledge to redesign the purpose of the office or concentrate, consolidate and perpetuate personal power. They are elected to serve according to the guidelines laid out by the law, the Constitution. This includes state constitutions for executing duties of governance on the regional and local level that take precedence over the national federation.

This is where we’ve gone astray and it is our own fault because we, first, instigated a change in title (servant to leader) which implies change of status; second, repeated the mistaken identity until we believed it; and third, by application we abdicated our role as boss, leader, sovereign.

Political correctness is an additional layer to the word confection we’ve concocted. The incorrect reaffirmation of government workers as leaders has been accepted, or baked, and a further, continued misuse of language has spread like icing on the cake.

The completed cake is then festooned with decorations that distract from the underlying plain batter, baked then covered over, the character of the foundation changed. Tiers of new definitions are added, obscuring the original until, in the end, the basic cake is no longer recognizable.

Granted, the analogy may be a little bizarre, but when we consider how the nation was constituted, or baked, with two main ingredients – the People and their inherent Freedom of deciding their own destiny – the concept of piling on regulation (frosting) until the base is hidden from view, may bring it into perspective.

By allowing the perception of government servants to become leaders, our words imprinting it in our minds, those servants have usurped the title with our blessing. It’s come to the point where, in our ignorance, we’ve grown angry at the government that we enabled to get out-of-hand. Now, we look on it as a king that deserves rebellion, but instead of taking the power back into our own hands, we seek, what? Another leader? Tsk, tsk, folks. We need a servant, not a leader because We, the People, are expected to lead.

There’s a reason why Isaiah 5:20 is so often quoted across social media platforms:

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

America has accepted the shift in language which the foregoing warns. It highlights exactly how political correctness has coated our constitutional foundation with frivolous deception.

Until we recapture the true meaning of elected officials as representative servants, and use our tongues to reinstate that fact, we will not only continue to disbelieve it and hunt for someone else to do our job, but we will suffer the consequences of our own folly.


Former newspaper publisher, A. Dru Kristenev,  grew up in the publishing industry working every angle of a paper, from ad composition and sales, to personnel management, copy writing, and overseeing all editorial content. During her tenure as a news professional, Kristenev traveled internationally as both a representative of the paper and non-profit organizations.