In yesterday’s article about Iran, a word kept showing up: handle. The War Powers Resolution is a handle. Tribal loyalty is a handle. But I used the term without properly explaining it, and it deserves its own treatment because understanding what a Handle is, and how it differs from a Principle, might be the single most important thing you can learn about politics.
Here’s the short version: most people navigate politics by holding onto words. They trust the word. They follow the word. They defend the word. But they rarely ever look at what the word is attached to.
That word is a Handle. And if all you’re holding on to is the Handle, someone can swap out the entire mechanism behind it while you mindlessly keep gripping.
Handles vs. Principles
A Principle is a foundational idea you understand, can articulate, and can apply to new situations. You hold it because you examined it. You can defend it without referencing a label, a party, or a slogan. If someone asks you why you believe it, you have an answer that goes deeper than “because I’m a _____.”
A Handle is just a label or a word. You hold it because it was handed to you by a party, a movement, a family, or a culture. You may have never examined what’s behind it. You might not even be able to define it without circular reasoning.
Most people think they hold Principles. They actually hold Handles.
Here’s the test: Can you explain why you hold your position without using the label itself? If you can’t explain why you’re a conservative without using the word “conservative”, if the best you can do is “because that’s what I am”, you’re holding a Handle. The same goes for “liberal”, “progressive”, “libertarian”, or any other political identity.
Handles feel like Principles because they point in the right direction, for a while. The danger isn’t that the Handle is wrong today. The danger is that Handles can be redirected. Principles can’t.
If you hold a Principle, you’ll abandon a label the moment it stops representing what you actually believe. If you hold a Handle, you’ll follow the label wherever it goes, even when it leads somewhere you’d never have chosen on your own. You’ll adjust your beliefs to match the new meaning rather than let go of the familiar word. And you won’t even notice you’ve moved.
The “Socialism” Handle
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s happened repeatedly, and the best-documented case is the word “socialism”.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, “socialism” in Britain and America was broadly synonymous with social reform. Child labor laws. Food safety. Fair wages. Decent working conditions. The Victorian-era British socialist movement had almost nothing to do with Karl Marx, it was shaped by traditional liberalism, basic Christian ethics, and a straightforward belief that industrialization shouldn’t grind workers into dust. Factory owners who provided fair pay and safe conditions were called “socialists,” and many wore the term comfortably. It meant you cared about the social wellbeing of the people around you.
Teddy Roosevelt saw the problem developing in real time. In two 1909 essays for The Outlook, “Where We Can Work with Socialists” and “”Where We Cannot Work with Socialists”, he noted that socialism was “both a wide and a loose term” covering utterly different types of people. On one side were social reformers who shared his principles of fairness and individual dignity: trust-busting, consumer protection, labor rights. On the other side were Marxist Collectivists who wanted state ownership of everything and the abolition of private property.
Roosevelt could work with the first group because they shared his Principles. He opposed the second group because their Principles were the opposite of his, regardless of the fact that both groups held the same Handle.
And here’s where the theft happened. The Marxist Collectivists didn’t invent a new word for their ideology. They grabbed an existing one, one that already carried decades of positive associations with community, fairness, and human dignity. The word “social” was the real prize. People hear “social” and think good neighbor, caring community, looking out for each other. The Collectivists welded that warm, familiar Handle onto state control, forced redistribution, and eventually totalitarian governance.
By the time the Soviet Union was starving millions under the banner of “socialism,” the word had been fully captured. Anyone who had ever held that Handle, meaning anyone who had ever advocated for worker safety or fair wages, could now be painted with the same brush as Stalin. The people who had been holding Principles, like Roosevelt, had already separated themselves from the word. They followed what they believed, not what it was called. The people who were only holding the Handle got dragged wherever the new owners of that word decided to take it.
The proof that Roosevelt was never a socialist in the Marxist sense? Eugene Debs, the actual Socialist Party candidate who ran against Roosevelt in 1912, attacked him savagely for using government power only to save capitalism, not to overthrow it. Roosevelt’s opponents called him a socialist. The actual Socialists called him a capitalist stooge. He was neither. He was a man holding Principles, and both sides tried to force their Handle onto him.
The Pattern Repeats
Once you see the mechanism, you see it everywhere.
“Liberal.” The word comes from liberty. Classical liberalism meant individual rights, limited government, free markets, Locke, Jefferson, Mill. By the mid-20th century, American “liberals” had become advocates of expanded government programs, centralized regulation, and Collectivist economic policy. The exact opposite of the word’s origin. But the Handle still carried the emotional warmth of “liberty” and “freedom.” The result: the people who actually believed in liberty started calling themselves “conservatives”, conserving the very principles that “liberal” used to mean. The word “liberal” had been emptied and refilled, and millions of people followed the new contents without noticing the switch.
“Progressive.” Who opposes progress? Nobody. That’s the point. Early Progressives in Roosevelt’s era focused on breaking monopolies, fighting corruption, and protecting individuals from powerful institutions, largely Individualist aims. Modern “progressives” advocate concentrating power in government institutions, restricting individual choice, and enforcing ideological conformity through social and economic pressure. The mechanism behind the Handle reversed completely. The word didn’t change. If you oppose what today’s “progressives” want, you’re not opposing a specific policy, you’re opposing progress itself. That framing isn’t an accident. It’s a strategy.
“Woke.” This one moved fast. “Stay woke” originated in Black American culture as a warning to remain aware of how systems actually work, don’t be naive, pay attention, protect yourself. Solid Individualist advice. Within a few years of mainstream adoption, “woke” had been captured by activists pushing Critical Race Theory, radical gender ideology, and speech codes. It went from “be alert” to “comply with our worldview.” The theft was so rapid and so complete that even its originators abandoned the word. Now both sides use it as a weapon and neither usage matches what it originally meant.
“Democracy.” This one’s the most dangerous because the principle behind it, government by the people, with individual rights protected, is foundational to the American system. But “democracy” has become a Handle for outcomes we approve of. When an election produces results the speaker likes, that’s democracy in action. When it doesn’t, it’s a “threat to democracy.” Pay attention to the phrase “our democracy”. It doesn’t mean the mechanism of self-governance. It means a specific political vision. Ironically, the people who invoke “democracy” most passionately are often the ones most hostile to actual democratic outcomes they disagree with.
Why It Works
Handle theft isn’t random and it isn’t accidental. It works because of predictable features of human psychology.
Emotional loading. Words accumulate emotional associations over time. “Social” means caring. “Liberal” means free. “Progressive” means forward. Stealing the word transfers the emotion. You don’t have to earn goodwill for your movement; you just borrow it from a word that already has some.
Identity anchoring. Once you’ve identified with a label, once “I’m a liberal” is part of how you see yourself, changing the label’s meaning doesn’t dislodge your identification. You adjust your beliefs to match the new meaning rather than abandon the familiar word. This is how Collectivists gradually move the political “center” without anyone noticing the shift. The people holding the Handle move with it. They think they’re standing still.
Opposition framing. If your movement owns the word “progressive,” anyone opposing you is automatically regressive. If you own “liberal,” your opponents are illiberal. The argument is won before it starts, not on merits, but on vocabulary.
Incremental redefinition. The meaning never changes overnight. It shifts a fraction at a time. Each individual shift is too small to fight over. By the time the word means something completely different from what it meant when you first grabbed onto it, you’ve been led miles from where you started. But you didn’t notice, because you never let go of the grip.
This connects to something I’ve noticed: social gravity pulls toward Collectivism. It’s the natural drift and resisting it requires constant effort. Handle theft is one of the primary engines of that gravity. You don’t have to convince people to become Collectivists. You just have to move the words they’re already holding.
The Defense
Holding Principles takes work. You have to understand them, test them, restate them, defend them on their own merits without leaning on a label. It’s much, much easier to just grab a Handle and not have to bother with all that tedious thinking, isn’t it.
A person holding the Principle of individual liberty will support it even when the word used to describe it changes, even when the party that once represented it abandons it, even when supporting it costs them socially. They follow the idea, not the brand.
Roosevelt did this. He held the principle of individual dignity and fair dealing. When that put him at odds with his own Republican Party, he left and started a new one. When Marxists tried to claim him, he rejected them. He followed the Principle, not the Handle. That’s why, over a century later, both parties still try to claim him, and neither one fully can.
In the Iran article, I pointed out that Massie and Paul hold Principles, consistency on Congressional authorization of military action, but that their flaw is treating a procedural mechanism as if it were the Principle itself. Congressional oversight exists to protect Individuals from the Collective misusing military power. If the Individuals most affected are celebrating in the streets, the Principle has been satisfied even if the procedure wasn’t followed. Even the raw wording of Principles can become Handles when you stop asking what the Principle actually serves.
So here’s the test, one more time. Can you articulate what you believe, and why, without using a single label? If “I’m a conservative” is the foundation of your political identity rather than a convenient shorthand for Principles you can enumerate and defend independently, you’re holding a Handle. And someone, somewhere, is already planning to swap what’s behind it.
Every example in this article follows the same pattern: a word with positive associations gets captured by people whose actual agenda would be rejected if described plainly. They don’t change the word. They change what’s behind it. And the people gripping the Handle follow along, because letting go of a familiar word feels like letting go of what you believe, even when the word stopped meaning what you believe a long time ago.
The defense is simple in concept, difficult in practice: know what you believe and why. When a label stops representing your principles, drop it without hesitation. The label was never the point. It was only ever the Handle.