Tense Conservatives Propose a New Conservative Verb Tense.

Tense Conservatives Propose a New Conservative Verb Tense.

Paducaville, NC         

8/13/2015

by Jeramee Sikorski

Outraged by the fact that their children are being brainwashed by English teachers, a local Tea Party has called for the creation of a new verb tense in the English language. 

“I was appalled that my son was being brainwashed by having to learn all these so-called ‘progressive’ tense verbs in school,” said Bobbi-Jo Lipton.   “I mean, honestly, is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution?” 

The local Tea Party in Paducaville, North Carolina has called for the firing of Ainsley Martin, the third grade teacher at James Madison Elementary School for “brainwashing children into the liberal agenda by steeping them in ‘progressive language’.”  The group also has a set of demands, including the creation of a new set of conservative verbs and a conservative verb tense to act as a counter weight to the “progressive verb agenda.”

“I don’t understand what they are so upset about,” replied Ms. Martin, who is clearly confused as to how she got into so much hot water, “this is just standard English usage that goes back at least to the middle ages.”

“That’s nonsense,” replied Mrs. Lipton.  “There is just no way that the Founders of this great nation would have been involved in such treason.  I don’t see any of these so-called ‘progressive verbs’ being made part of our culture in the Constitution.  It’s just un-American, and it’s got me boiling mad.”

“The progressive verb tense is about expressing an action that is in a state of progress, or is happening right now.  It’s just the ‘–ing’ form of a verb,” said Martin.  “So,” she explained, “while a song is in the process of being sung, a person is singing it.”

“They need to teach the controversy,” said Raymond R. Bigelow, the local Tea Party leader.  When asked to elaborate on how third grade English could be controversial, Mr. Bigelow, who asked to be called Ray-Bob, as his friends call him, elaborated on the Paducaville Tea Party’s list of demands.  “They need to be teaching the Conservative tense as well, “said Ray-Bob.  When informed that he had just used the present progressive tense when he said "be teaching," Ray-Bob said “that’s what I’m talking about.  It’s the subversive liberal agenda.”

“Well, if the progressive tense shows an action in progress, then I guess we could let the parents call the past tense ‘the conservative’ tense if they wanted,” replied Ms. Martin.  “I just want the children to learn how to properly use the language.”

The local Tea Party affiliate has rejected the offer, saying “We ain’t taking no compromises on this.”  When asked if he could give an example of the progressive tense that he found so controversial, he stated simply “socialism, that’s what we are talking about — but we got a way to fix all that.”

One solution proposed is to get rid of all the irregular verbs in the English language.  “All them irregular verbs are just designed to confuse people, and that’s when they end up falling prey to liberal, socialist ideas.  People get confused, and then they start to drink up those liberal ideas,” said Mr. Bigelow, adding, “Instead, we can make it all a lot simpler with the conservative tense.”  Ray-Bob explained that the conservative tense gets rid of irregular past tense verbs by simply adding ‘–ed’ to the end of the present tense form of the verb.  So, ran becomes runned, drank becomes drinked, etc.

“There’s a kind of prettiness to it all,” said Ms. Lipton.  “You know, it’s like the past was so much simpler, and we are making the past tense verbs simpler to learn too,” she explained.  When asked for comment, Ms. Martin was tepid in her reply that “well, at least there is a little more consistency that way.”

Among the other changes to the English language that Ray-Bob is demanding are new conservative verbs. "Housewifing" is one such addition, to describe “a biblical woman who knows what is expected of her.”   "Taxcutting" would also become a new verb, meaning “to solve a problem that was created by those fools in Washington, or wherever the local government is” according to Ray-Bob. 

In addition, the group has a list of deletions that they would recommend.  One deletion would be the word “consistency.”  Just say “the same,” said Ray-Bob.  We don’t need no ‘consistency’ or any of those other three-dollar words.  The group has some additions in mind as well.  ‘Fed’ would be given an additional definition.  Along with being an abbreviation of federal, it will also officially signify a bureaucratically created problem.

“All those words that mean the same thing are just ways that the liberals try to confuse everyone.  We don’t need all those words.  The dictionary is just like the tax code, most of it is just unnecessary and a way to control your thoughts,” said Mr. Bigelow.  He then added, “We need to dump all those extra words just like the original tea party dumped all that tea into the ocean.”  When asked if he wanted to eliminate synonyms altogether, Ray-Bob said he wasn’t sure what a synonym was.  When explained that a synonym was a word with the same or similar meaning as another word, he replied “that’s exactly how those liberals work.  They just make stuff up to confuse people.” 

Toward that end, the descriptive words wonderful, terrific, great, and awesome will be replaced by the new word ‘taxcut’.  “There really isn’t anything quite as good as a tax cut,” explained Ray-Bob.  He also recommends that taxcut, in a new noun form, replace the words solution and answer; be used as an adverb to replace “great, wonderful,” and other similar words; and replace exclamations like ‘Eureka!’  

So, to put it all in context, if there were a fed created by Washington, the best taxcut would be a tax cut, taxcuttingly taxcutting the problem for good.  Suddenly, there would be no more fed’s.  Holy Taxcut‼!  Wouldn’t that be taxcut!  “Don’t you see how it all makes sense when you get rid of the unneeded words,” Ray-Bob asked rhetorically.  (Editor's note: Future editions of this article will probably be amended to eliminate words like ‘rhetorically’ from the last sentence.  When this taxcut, new conservative language takes hold, it will taxcut the fed of extra words like ‘rhetorically’.)

Ray-Bob would also abolish the word abortion from the language, claiming that we could eliminate all abortions if there just wasn’t a word for them anymore.  “You can’t want something that there isn’t a word for, now, can ya’?” explained Ray-Bob.

When asked if he was trying to implement the English of Orwell’s 1984 Newspeak, Ray-Bob replied, “I don’t know about any guy called Orwell, but I do know that 1984 was a better time.”  He then added wistfully, “Reagan was the president then, so, yeah, maybe we should.”

When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich read about the proposal, he said “Taxcut!  This is the most amazing, I mean taxcut, change to the English language that I have ever seen.”  Gingrich, the master-mind behind the Contract with America, the conservative party platform of the 1990’s further said, “It has the potential to be a real game-changer in terms of getting the conservative message out.  This could really help taxcut a lot of feds in our country by helping people understand how important tax cuts are to a free people.”

“This is just ludicrous,” commented Brendan Beery, a Constitutional law professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School.   “This is not about any agenda.  The progressive tense is just a natural part of the language.  It’s just the ‘–ing’ form of a verb.  It is used throughout the Constitution.  For example, the Second Amendment notes that ‘a well regulated militia, being necessary, to the security of a free state . . .’  “’Being necessary’ means that the need is in progress, that its ongoing and continues,” said the professor, adding that “James Madison, whom the elementary school is named after, used the progressive tense a lot when writing the Constitution.”

“Well, that part about the guns is probably the first time any so-called law professor has said anything that makes sense,” replied Ray-Bob when asked for comment.

                                                                                                                                     

Editor's Note: I hope that you enjoyed this little piece of satire.  I hope that it was outlandish enough to be obvious satire, but you never know these days.  Feel free to leave a message in the comments below, or click on one of the share buttons (below) to let others enjoy as well.  If you want to get new posts as soon as they come out, there is a "Follow" button at the top right.  Thank you!