By Nick Bond

Give me an example of irony.

Rain on your wedding day? Not so much.

The ending of an O. Henry story? Closer.

OH! OH! OH! I KNOW! A march on Washington in February protesting global warming during a snowstorm!

Now, before you environmental beatniks get your locally-made-and-cruelty-free panties in a knot, this isn’t an editorial about whether or not global warming is happening-because it is-or whether or it’s not man-made-because it is-but rather, my fundamental issue with the Left’s inability to give their issues the names that don’t suck.

Seemingly inconsequential to those unaware, in the context of political discourse, the names of things play such an important role in who gets to frame the argument.

And whoever gets to “frame the argument” usually wins it.

From Nixon’s call for “law and order” to Reagan’s “welfare queens on the south side of Chicago” to Bush’s “death tax,” America’s liberals constantly find themselves being beat to the punch on the underlying language that controls the direction of the arguments that matter the most to them politically.

The Left’s struggle with language extends beyond being beaten to the punch left and right, as even when they are the ones that get to set the terms of the argument they lose. One doesn’t look have to look too far past “don’t ask, don’t tell” for evidence of this phenomenon. Not only did it lead to ridicule of the Left’s position, it also alienated the very group that the program was designed to “protect.” The gay community felt abandoned by the Clinton administration, and their absence was felt in subsequent election results and the rise of the Log Cabin Republicans. Although the “don’t ask, don’t tell” fallout was bad, it pales in comparison to the credibility gap created by the Left’s new favorite issue: “global warming.”

“Global warming,” for people who aren’t idiots, is an explanation of what the increase in man-made carbon dioxide emissions is physically doing to the earth’s surface-that is raising of the temperature of the air and sea, which then causes the polar ice caps to melt, which leads to a rise in water levels, which in turn changes air flow and weather patterns all over the Earth. Instead those stricken with the malady of ignorance have made phrase “global warming” a punching bag for skeptics. From wondering how longer summers are detrimental to anyone other than skiers to not understanding how much a difference a increase of one degree in average temperature is on a global scale, the argument has been hijacked by the ignorant.

The reason? Instead of using the codified language of their opponents, the Left tries to speak the truth both purely and simply. Unfortunately for them, as any fan of clichés can tell you, the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple, something their opponents caught onto a long time ago.

Any one that thinks that Nixon’s “law and order” wasn’t a thinly veiled call to arms for racist Midwestern Americans upset about the race riots, or that Reagan’s push for “welfare reform” wasn’t poking and stoking the same fires of disenfranchisement and civil strife that was destroying the New Deal coalition is at best, na’ve, and at worst, blatantly ignoring the facts.

As such, I propose a new name for global warming that the Left can use: “the end of the world as we know it.” Catchy enough to be the title of an REM song, the new phrase would feature the same dynamic, argument-framing language so expertly employed by their opponents, and perhaps most importantly-for the Left anyway-an accurate assessment of what’s at stake.

Nick Bond is a senior political science student and managing editor of The Chronicle. You may e-mail him at [email protected].