The Wonderfully Elastic English Language

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

     If you're not a writer with a finely-developed sense of the actual definitions of words as you'd come to understand them decades back, it may not have dawned on you at just how much words have undergone atrocious etymological permutations thanks to government, social media and right wing pundits such as the Orwellian Frank Luntz.
     Every language, as its participating society changes, evolves with it and some amount of elasticity is to be expected and even encouraged so that language does not become brittle and inelastic. But there have been several words of late that have been hijacked and rogered for partisan purposes by right wing nut jobs in both Congress and churches as well as Tea Baggers. What follows below are the etymons of some of these perverted words and phrases followed by my interpretation on the new definitions.

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Patriot, n. A person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.
Patriot, n. An exceptional individual struggling to escape the tyranny of health care, a cleaner, healthier environment and a social safety net by taking up arms against the most powerful government on earth in the interests of secession. A Civil War holdover. (See dodger, Tax.)

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Exceptionalism, n. The condition of being exceptional; uniqueness.
Exceptionalism, n. The Objectivist Randian philosophy that every man is better off on his own and left to his devices while hatching schemes of villainous enterprise against the helpless and unsuspecting (See War, Iraq)

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Tax, n. A sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
Tax, n.  Legalized theft of a Republic imposed on those who apparently don't like Social Security, Medicare, roads, bridges, police and fire departments, a national defense and other frivolous usages. A plague avoided at all costs by dozens of corporations.

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Entitlement, n. The right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation.
Entitlement, n. The audacious expectation of guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation that's already been paid for with stolen funds (see Tax).

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Capitalism, n. An economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
Capitalism, n. An economic system in which investment is obsolete, in which pensions are either nonexistent or stolen, labor outsourced to predatory contractors of third world countries and the economic divide between rich and poor is constantly stretched; A spectator sport for the poor who are slowly poisoned by the concessions; White collar predation; Darwinism with an MBA.

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Journalism, n. The occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business; The first draft of history.
Journalism, n. The first draft of unofficial war declarations and advertising, as evidenced by the growing amount of air time being sold in lieu of actual journalistic content. The act of acquiescing to the government's every whim in a semi-literary fashion (See Stenographer, Amanuensis, Democracy, Lapdogs of) 

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Republican, n. A member of the Republican Party; Formerly, a moderate to radical liberal.
Republican, n. A member of the Republican Party. Currently, a racist, misogynistic, subversive and seditious anti science Bible banger (see Patriot).

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Democrat, n. A member of the Democratic Party. Formerly, a moderate to radical conservative.
Democrat, n. A member of the Democratic Party. Currently, a moderate to radical conservative. (See Obama, Barack)

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Friend, n. A person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
Friend, v. used with object The act of attaching oneself to a person, usually a random stranger, on a social networking site regardless of the utter lack of affection or personal regard. Occasionally we even marry them.

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Evolution, n. Change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.
Evolution, n. A word that has, ironically, undergone a pronounced devolution as is has now been relegated to a mere unproven theory currently on a par with Creationism (especially in the Bible Belt), which states that Mankind did not spring from organic matter but primitive Pla-Do molded in the hands of an unproven Sky Wizard. (See Bill, Mr.)