Back when I was in the office on a regular basis, I would sometimes get calls from someone who called himself an old Republican redneck (though he refused to give an actual name; I suspect I know who it was despite his efforts to subvert Caller ID). Among his many taunts, most of which were not family-friendly, were accusations that I was a socialist, communist and (my favorite because it just cracked me up) “the purveyor of all things librul” (yes, librul, not liberal; redneck, remember?).

Meanwhile, I would get letters from someone whose often-inflammatory letters were usually rejected, and he’d replace my middle name with “Republican” … I never really liked my middle name since it made me sound like a refugee from “Petticoat Junction,” but this? Not an improvement. Jehoshaphat, maybe (I’ve told a few people that’s what the J stands for). Republican or Democrat, nah. Need I remind you of my views on parties, many of which I share with our founding fathers?

Then there are the trolls. I sometimes feel I need to call in one of my favorite two college political science professors (probably Dr. Hartwig, who was the chair of the department and moderate; Dr. Wang would strike them as too liberal) to clue them in on the political spectrum and the actual meanings of words they think they implement with such precision in their cut-and-paste diatribes. I’d offer a dictionary, but they’d probably think it was liberal-biased, just like all those fact-checkers who link to original sources. Facts???? How dare they!

Sigh.

But nothing seems to set some of these people off more than when they “think” someone is “saying the quiet part out loud.” (Ahem, Lake Superior State University, can we add that phrase to the next list of banished words and phrases, please? Thank you! And yes, I did nominate the phrase, my second nomination this year, after “radical.” Feel free to nominate your own overused, misused and abused words and phrases.)

One of those “quiet part out loud” moments came recently in a Biden administration adviser’s use of the phrase “liberal world order,” which prompted pundits and others on the far right to claim, basically, that liberals planned to take over the world. Because clearly they’re very organized here, considering that though Democrats on the whole get more votes nationwide, they’re marginalized in lower-population areas and districts that have been redrawn to minimize their impact (because land is more important than people when it comes to voting, especially if those people don’t share your politics). Because everything is about winners and losers now.

Again, sigh.

But as Inigo Montoya would say, that phrase doesn’t mean what some think it means. Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted soon after Brian Deese made that comment about the “liberal world order”: “The White House openly stated that you’re just going to have to pay more in gas so that they can hold the ‘liberal world order’ together and it barely registers as breaking news. They’re telling you everything they plan to do and most don’t even care.”

Except they’re not. Rep. Ruben Gallego, facepalm emoji at the ready, tweeted (without needed punctuation), in criticism of Deese’s word choice, “Democracy just say Democracy, we are helping defend a Democratic country. Stop talking to Americans as if they read Foreign Policy magazine.”

I might add “passed civics” or “paid attention in classes on 20th century world history.” Maybe that’s just me, though I know it’s not.

As FactCheck.org noted, “liberal world order,” which is also called “liberal international order,” has been in use as a phrase since at least the mid-1940s and the end of World War II when, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, “countries sought to ensure the world never again devolved into such horrific violence. World leaders created a series of international organizations and agreements to promote global cooperation on issues including security, trade, health, and monetary policy. The United States has championed this system—known as the liberal world order—for the past 75 years. During this time, the world has enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity.

“But these institutions are far from perfect, and today they are struggling to address new sources of disorder, such as climate change and a deadly pandemic. What’s more, democracy is on the decline around the world, authoritarianism is on the rise, and countries like China are deliberately chipping away at the liberal world order, creating parallel institutions of their own. Faced with these challenges, will the liberal world order survive? If a new system emerges, what will that mean for freedom, peace, and prosperity worldwide?”

Other leaders have used such terminology as well, like George H.W. Bush who, echoing Winston Churchill, spoke of a “new world order.” Which of course launched (or probably more accurately, relaunched) conspiracy theories. The idea of cooperation is clearly terrifying for some. As is context. And nuance.

And facts.

So we come to the word at the center of it all, “liberal.” Like with “Christian,” there are many flavors, and some are a bit inconvenient, and they don’t all agree.

Liberalism in short is the belief in freedom, equality, democracy and human rights often associated with thinkers like John Locke. The founders were essentially classical liberals, as were emancipationists and suffragettes, and also believed to different degrees in free trade and laissez-faire government. Most of the Western world is considered liberal, not because of being on the left politically, but because its governments are mostly based on classical liberal principles.

As time has passed, those factions (some based on the same principles of liberalism) that George Washington spoke about in his farewell address grew, split, grew some more, and split further. And Republicans and Democrats essentially switched places, most noticeably after the Civil Rights Acts (no matter what some try to maintain). Heck, the Republican Party of the 1980s would probably be considered too liberal today, even though Ronald Reagan is still worshipped by so many. But the plain truth of the matter is that all the parties have elements of the original liberalism (gasp!), and hyperpartisans have so clouded what the parties actually stand for that labels are meaningless.

Still, libertarians and some never-Trump conservatives are now picking up the classical liberal label, apparently to distance themselves from the former president, but without considering the baggage laded (largely by those same libertarians and conservatives) on to “liberal” by those who don’t understand its etymology, especially in the U.S., where it’s associated with communists, socialists, anarchists, academics, Hollywood, the media, and probably cats (you know how libertine they can get) and other sketchy creatures. Dudes, you’re just asking for trouble.

Is it any wonder the whole political thing drives me nuts?