Words v. Terms

People these days don’t get legal training unless they are seeking law as a profession. Consequently, the only kind of communication they are familiar with is ordinary speech and technical writing about scientific studies. The approach of the legal field to the use of the English language, on the other hand, is UNIQUE and DIFFERENT from every area that a typical person has experienced. You must understand how legal language works or you are sure to be deceived and victimized by government bureaucrats and members of the legal profession.

Most people use mere “words” governed by the rules of English grammar. Lawyers use “terms”.

1. A “term” is a word that has a specific legal meaning APART from its use in ordinary English speech.
2. A “term” actually REPLACES rather than merely ENLARGES the ordinary use of words in English speech.

Much of the purposeful conflation and deliberately confusing language found in statutory laws stems from deliberately deceptive vocabulary choices.  We call these deliberately deceptive vocabulary choices in government documents  “Words of Art” and the government generally refers to them as “Terms.”  Readers on a search for truth are encouraged to read every government document starting with a goal of understanding the Terms used.  This is because the government authors specifically target words that have a common, everyday meaning which is distinctly different, purposefully twisted, legally misdirecting, and highly deceptive when used as a Term in a government document.  The government likes to apply specific legal definitions to normal and everyday words so that an unsuspecting reader is intentionally misinformed as to what a government law, regulation, or opinion is describing and to whom the government document actually applies.  This is especially true for revenue generating documents, but not limited to just revenue generating documents.

The Supreme Court says specifically that when a term is defined in a statute that the regular meaning of the word is to be ignored and statute controls.

“When a statute includes an explicit definition, we must follow that definition, even if it varies from that term’s ordinary meaning. Meese v. Keene, 481 U.S. 465, 484-485 (1987) (“It is axiomatic that the statutory definition of the term excludes unstated meanings of that term”); Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. at 392-393, n. 10 (“As a rule, `a definition which declares what a term “means” . . . excludes any meaning that is not stated'”); Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Lenroot, 323 U.S. 490, 502 (1945); Fox v. Standard Oil Co. of N.J., 294 U.S. 87, 95-96 (1935) (Cardozo, J.); see also 2A N. Singer, Sutherland on Statutes and Statutory Construction § 47.07, p. 152, and n. 10 (5th ed. 1992) (collecting cases). That is to say, the statute, read “as a whole,” post at 998 [530 U.S. 943] (THOMAS, J., dissenting), leads the reader to a definition. That definition does not include the Attorney General’s restriction — “the child up to the head.” Its words, “substantial portion,” indicate the contrary.” 

[Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 942-943 (2000);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1902129435857948493]

“It is axiomatic that the statutory definition of the term excludes unstated meanings of that term.  Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 392, and n. 10 (1979). Congress’ use of the term “propaganda” in this statute, as indeed in other legislation, has no pejorative connotation.{19} As judges, it is our duty to [481 U.S. 485] construe legislation as it is written, not as it might be read by a layman, or as it might be understood by someone who has not even read it.“

[Meese v. Keene, 481 U.S. 465, 484 (1987);
SOURCE: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13796872946132691159]

The purposeful switch of everyday words to have unique and distinct meanings when read in a government or legal context has the effect of purposefully deceiving everyday Americans who do not have an extensive legal background.  When the average American reads a document from the government without looking into the Terms used they leave with a purposefully crafted misinterpretation.  This isn’t an accident.  You’ll notice that most Americans go through 15 years of government education without having a single class on law.  You’re led to believe it’s too complicated or bothersome to learn the law.  Besides… what football game is on tonight?  The system is designed to steer you away from learning laws and personally defending your rights.  Confusion and cognitive dissonance (using the word alien in the term “nonresident alien” to describe ordinary Americans) is one of the most powerful tools offered by the government to steer you away from this status election and choice that can free you from most federal government obligations.

To illustrate the point of the intentional bamboozling, the original income tax passed by Congress during the civil war in 1861 was 4 pages.  It was 15 pages by 1913, 111 pages by 1939, and today the income tax is housed within 3837 pages of internal revenue code.  In 2002 the US Treasury Secretary O’Neill declared:

Our tax code is an abomination. It’s 9,500 pages of confusion and complexity. That complexity is costly – to taxpayers, to our economy, and to public confidence in the fairness of the system. We’ve got to fix the tax code so that it’s simple, clear, and fair. Americans deserve to have a code that’s understandable and treats everyone the same.

[Paul Oneil, Secretary of the Treasury, April 15, 2002;
SOURCE: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/po2089]

There are circular definitions called “tautologies”, definitions hidden in previous drafts of the documents, purposefully obfuscated definitions, definitions only represented in the negative form (such as “nonresident alien” in 26 U.S.C. §7701(b)(1)(B)), and definitions are hidden deep within the document rather than easily accessible at the start of chapters, and so on.  As you’ll see, the expansion of the law into an unknowable and unmanageable mess was intentional.  The purpose was to hide the greatest financial crime in world history from the American public.  The government is stealing your money from you, using it for purposes you did not intend, and claiming to do so on your sworn-under-penalty-of-perjury behalf. What greater injustice could there be than a government that becomes a PREDATOR rather than a PROTECTOR that only protects itself and hides that fact in a fog of equivocation, words of art, mystery, legal ignorance, and confusion they manufactured in you with the public fool system by never teaching you about law?

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
[George Orwell, Politics and the English Language; SOURCE: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/6510269-politics-and-the-english-language]