<p>Annette Lathrop</p>

As the election draws near and the political rhetoric more high-pitched, skilled professionals work at crafting messages to influence, persuade, or even confuse voters. The most alert and diligent voter can get mired in the manure shoveled into our path in the weeks before an election.

Proven political strategies: when you cant convince voters to vote for your candidate or cause, sense a time to exploit (maybe when theres too little time to rebut with truth), muddy the pool, confuse, distort or discourage the voting public.

One way of creating confusion is using political terms that have double meanings.

A handful of terms used in todays political lexicon have evolved from a generally understood definition to now having dual meanings. Restoring America, defending our freedom, and the American Dream all fall into this category.

In creating alternative meanings, liberals have hijacked traditional language providing them with an opportunity to substitute in liberal ideology. Their technique works much like a virus. The life cycle of a virus requires a viral agent to take over a healthy cell, destroy its nucleus and the normal cell function; the viral agent then redirects the cell to produce thousands of viral agents.

Redirecting traditional language toward liberal concepts is now yielding fruit. The word tolerance, for example, no longer means tolerating beliefs different than ones own. This liberal re-defining has had profound effects on our first amendment freedom of religion rights. Expressing timeless faith principles can now be called hate speech.

The American Dream is a phrase familiar. Yet those bantering with political messages now view this dream from polar opposites. According to research from the Heritage Foundation, there are two completely different and competing dreams. One is known as the traditional American Dream and the other, the liberal American Dream.

Historically, the American Dream has referred to a ladder of opportunity available to everyone. Climbing this ladder requires individual effort. A free market economy, where artificial barriers are removed, insures equal opportunity for those seeking this dream. The governments role is merely a supporting one. The greatest threat to this American Dream is complacency due to dependence on government programs.

In contrast, the liberal American Dream is best described as an escalator to be ridden for upward mobility; a ride that insures everyone a better life. Instead of focusing on the individuals effort, the liberal dream focuses on government assistance. Placing the government in a primary and controlling role, the liberal dream requires social engineering to achieve sameness of opportunity. In this alternative American Dream, government spending provides the source of opportunity while the biggest threat is income inequality.

Voters, including some who pay little political attention other than snippets from the mainstream media, are easily confused by this dual language and this may be one of the reasons many have concluded there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats.

However, there are significant differences in the two majority parties, differences found in the convictions on which they stand. Each partys platform shines those differences, showing very distinct paths; the direction guide for elected leaders. Generally, Republicans hold to the traditional American Dream while Democrats embrace the liberal dream.

Today, voting requires an increasing amount of time and effort to plow through the muck slung out to confuse voters. This occurs at a time when a growing percentage of the electorate is tuning out due to an increasing distaste and distrust of all things political.

As you work to gather information that will help you decide how to vote, focus on foundational beliefs of each party while staying aware of the political messaging that may not mean what you think.

Rancher Annette Lathrop is currently Wallowa County chair for the Oregon Republican Party.