This struck the person I was having a discussion with as wrong, and not just wrong, but backward.

“I guess I’m just more progressive in my beliefs,” said she.

That part struck me as wrong, and I soon found myself on the offensive…in a polite way. I should also note, that I’m paraphrasing myself.

“You’re not progressive,” I said. “You just believe in a different concept of marriage than the Christian church, which bases its idea on the rule of God as described in the Bible. What you think isn’t advanced and what I believe isn’t regressive, it’s just not the same belief.”

Indeed, I could make the argument that if anyone was regressive, it was the LGBT community attempting to force its will on an entire group of people while the Christian church is only trying to abide by its own system within its own community. The only regression happening here is from the LGBT community trying to domineer others in a country considered sociologically advanced due to its system based on personal freedoms, and that had left behind the old ways of kings and oligarchies.

To her credit, she immediately explained that she wasn’t trying to insult me by describing herself as progressive or insinuate that I was somehow regressive in my thinking. That part got my attention and irked me, not because I disbelieved her, but because I could tell she honestly didn’t know any better. She used the term “progressive” so quickly and loosely that she didn’t stop to consider what the word meant at any point in her life up until now.

And that got me thinking.

I’ve addressed the left’s consistent attempts to change the everyday language we use to describe things. It’s pretty naked at this point. They push the public to use words like “climate justice” “reproductive health” and “equality,” but if you strip away the pleasant vernacular, they become the agendas socialism through climate legislation, abortion, and LGBT dominance of the culture.

The word “progress,” however, is one of the most common and oldest words the left uses in order to describe its wheelings and dealings. It’s an umbrella term meant to define every move it makes. No matter what they do, it’s “progressive.”

English language users redefine words all the time. The word “cool” means that something lacks heat still, but it also means you find something interesting or agreeable. “Ass” describes a pack animal, but it can also describe someone’s butt or the fact that someone is acting like an idiot or being very rude.

“Progress” means advancing and that hasn’t changed. We don’t use it as a way to describe anything else, and the left counts on that. They continue to describe the advancement of any of their agendas, from LGBT agendas to abortion, as “progressive.” It fools people into thinking that this is the way forward and that society advances toward the light of civilization whenever they embrace that kind of thinking.

Thus, whenever someone advocates for abortion and describes themself as “pro-choice” — another bit of wordplay from the left — they can pat themselves on the back for thinking “progressively” and believe themselves to be elevating our culture.

There’s nothing progressive about what they’re doing. Killing children in the womb, even as science continually finds more and more reasons to stop doing that, is not progress. Forcing one group’s beliefs on another isn’t progress. Pulling our system into a provenly failed system like socialism is the very definition of regression.

However, so many people don’t understand that fact. They haven’t stopped to consider how the word is being used in any given moment by people advocating for this political agenda or that. They’ve been inundated with the word so much that it’s become synonymous with a certain political party while the word’s definition itself hasn’t changed.

The mind-warping that occurs because of this is palpable. The person I was having the discussion with didn’t mean to say that I was regressive, but she certainly thought her thinking was advanced, fair, and geared toward the future while mine was not without even knowing it.

If the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing everyone that he didn’t exist, then the greatest trick the Democrats ever pulled is something similar. They work in the open while hiding behind terminologies that paint nefarious things as advancement. Everyday people hear the terms and use that to define the world around them, and their beliefs go with it.

If we’re going to win the culture war, this is one thing we’re going to have to tackle. We need to begin correcting the misuse of our language in everyday conversation, on the radio, and on television. We can’t let the term “progressive” fly around unchallenged most of all.

There’s nothing progressive about regression.