Entitlement: a dirty word?

Lately, I’ve noticed that some prominent conservative politicians are scapegoating entitlements. They make the word sound repugnant, malignant, a tumor to be excised. What?

Language is always in a state of flux, with additions and changes to existing words. As a reader, writer and erstwhile English teacher, I’m aware of how that happens. Words spring off the pages of newspapers, websites, and books, out of the airwaves, and into the lexicon. Some make it into dictionaries and others are bounced around for a while, then die.

One way words change is through repeated and widespread misuse. A good example is the word peruse: to examine thoroughly. I had the idea that it signified the opposite, to gloss over. I thought that because I’d heard the word misused so often.

A word can become less respectable through pejorative usage. In the world of politics, words are often used as weapons in an ideological battle. That’s what happened with entitlement. I consulted my ancient (1996) unabridged dictionary, and learned that an entitlement was a legal and contractual right. Somewhere along the line, we expanded the definition to include the belief that one is entitled to certain privileges.

Scott Walker recently said, “Collective bargaining is not a right. It is an expensive entitlement.” Mr Walker apparently misunderstands what the word means. He’s either saying, collective bargaining is not a right, it’s a right; or it’s not a right, but an expensive belief. Either way, he’s wrong.

Rick Santorum evokes images of Regan’s welfare queens when discussing entitlements, thus reinforcing and perpetuating the pejorative connotation, not to mention racial stereotypes. For his listeners, whom I assume to be socially and politically right wing, this bridge between welfare, blacks and entitlements is one they’ve crossed before.  Poor people, suggests Rick, are lazy, immoral malingerers. If they weren’t, they’d be Rich.

In the sense of belief that certain things are due us, I’d say the wealthy and powerful have an edge on the rest of us. Think of the myriad politicians who’ve inadvertently engineered their own demise by thinking they were entitled to a woman, money or votes.

When I think about entitlement, I think of a miscreant, usually in a luxury car, rushing past rows of people waiting in line, people who understand the concept of taking one’s turn, who don’t assume their superior status gives them privileges denied to the rest of us.

So, entitlement is either a right, earned by the labor of workers, as in the case of social security and unemployment insurance, or it is a delusion. I think we have a lot more to fear from the people who are twisting the word entitlement, the perpetrators of inequality, than we do from folks who have worked hard all of their lives and rightly expect to receive the rewards they’ve earned.