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October 29, 2009
Exclusive: Taking Back the Political Dictionary
Oscar Wilde once said that Socialism will never work since it took too many evenings. Alas, that warning has hardly deterred Socialists from trying to impose everything from government-run healthcare to leveling academic achievement, and so those resisting this nefarious agenda must work even harder.
Unfortunately, far down the daily “to do” list in combating the hydra-headed monster is protecting the English language from being captured by radicals who, unlike many conservatives, recognize how words profoundly shape thinking. We are not talking about spelling or syntax; our warning concerns expropriating commonplace vocabulary for ideological ends to debilitate conservatives even before debate begins.
Consider how “tolerance” has been profitably captured by the left. When tolerance emerged during 16th century religious strife it referred to putting up with something despite its noxious character. The definition is tri-part – toleration was the mid-point between liking something and wanting to stamp it out. A Protestant may abhor Catholics but, and this is critical, he did not persecute them despite the odium The concept’s beauty was that it gave a name for suffering the detested – live and let live – and thus encouraged civility among once warring religious sects. Measured by millions of lives saved, tolerance was a magnificent linguistic innovation given the impossibility of getting Protestants to admire Catholics and vice versa.
The left has hijacked today’s definition of tolerance. It now means unrestricted appreciation of differences. This is not accepting those who differ despite flaws; it is pushing aside all flaws, real and imagined, and embracing what is different. A three-category term is collapsed into hate or love. Now, Protestants must fully appreciate Catholics and inevitable reservations about their theology or customs must be suppressed lest one, horror of horrors, exhibit intolerance. This is a “one-drop” rule – the slightest aversion to gays, for example, certifies homophobia.
Needless to say, unadulterated admiration for what was once disliked is impossible, but this is wonderful news for totalitarians intent on refurbishing humanity. Since inquiry will always find lingering animosity, i.e., “intolerance,” this finding is a standing invitation to relentless “appreciate-all-differences” indoctrination. If we lived in the Dark Ages “educators” would just keep tightening the thumb screws until whites proclaimed zero aversion towards blacks, Hispanics or Asians. To insist that one preferred to avoid these groups but will leave them unharmed is insufficient. The “intolerance,” no matter how inconsequential, requires yet more ritual purification.
Consider a totally different example: at-risk. Discussions of horrific American schools endlessly mention “at-risk” students and a listener might surmise that “at-risk” referred to those likely to be attacked. Hardly. “At-risk” has been twisted into a catch-all term for those prone to violence, potential dropouts and otherwise troubling students. In a linguistic sleight of hand, the former “juvenile delinquent” has been refurbished to suggest a youngster in dire need of costly after-school intervention, perhaps a make-work job, and all the rest that the expanding social welfare state might provide to rescue the needy.
It is almost as if radicals have factories where wordsmiths daily labor to conscript America’s vocabulary to crush conservatives before they even open their mouths. Like modern industrial enterprises it holds annual banquets to honor heroic accomplishment and according to my spies, a Ms. Amber Bernstein recently captured a Lifetime Achievement award for transforming “diversity” from any assortment of traits into racial/ethnic quotas. Her co-worker, Abdul D’Gonif, recently won a hefty cash bonus for re-configuring “stereotype” from an over-generalization to a falsehood if a single exception could be found regardless of its overall validity. So, if one finds a single non-terrorist Muslim, the statement “Islam breeds terrorism” is, according to Mr. D’Gonif, totally false, just a “stereotype.” A year later he even outdid himself with “dangerous stereotype” to mean an idea whose truth was patently obvious but could not be uttered since its truth would be deemed offensive. For example, that blacks are more likely to rape whites than vice versa is factually true but somebody who said this publicly would be condemned for using “a dangerous stereotype” since: (1), exceptions exist and, (2), this awkward fact may offend somebody, real or imagined. In an instant, a frank discussion of crime is pushed off the public agenda by invoking “dangerous stereotypes.” Who wants to traffic in dangerous stereotypes?
Though their successes at this enterprise are notable, like a CIA organized coup d’état, triumphs must be keep quiet lest they wake-up sleeping conservatives. It takes iron discipline to resist telling your children that “I invented a whole new vocabulary to help expand the social welfare state. Son, next time you hear ‘the homeless community’ to describe shiftless bickering, sometimes drunk, often deranged vagrants, just thank your hard-at-work Dad.” Imagine the frustration of the unsung heroes who replaced “lazy students” with “failing schools” or converted medically risky gay sex to a “valid alternative lifestyle.” All of this wordplay is a great radical victory but, alas, rarely confessed lest conservatives figure it out.
To illustrate how all this can come together, consider a typical American family of Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa. Our tale begins when Bart arrives home all beaten up. After some coaxing, he explains that to achieve the diversity so vital to “real learning” his school is now 90 percent minority, and includes hundreds of “non-traditional” students (overage “challenged” miscreants kept on attendance rolls to sustain state funding), and though Bart tried his best to hide from these at-risk students, he did not want to be guilty of dangerous stereotypes. At this point Lisa announces that she is beginning to “explore her sexual identity” and her parents should not victimize her by being “too judgmental.”
Enraged, Homer storms off to confront the principal, a Ms. Goodthink He is clobbered, at least verbally. She shares with him how the school does not “discriminate” against scholars (all students are now “scholars” to enhance self-esteem) from diverse backgrounds, especially the “underprivileged” who, through no fault of their own, lack home-based role models (i.e., parents). Moreover, none of this would have happened had Bart been more tolerant to those culturally inclined who express themselves non-verbally in ways marginalized by the dominant white middle-class culture. A breakdown of communications, she adds, and suggests more honest dialogue, even sensitivity training for Bart so he can deal with less verbal cultures. As for Lisa, Ms. Goodthink explains that she “needs space to find herself” and Homer should “relax,” since all fifth-grade boys have been issued condoms as part of the school’s “choices for personal responsibility” outreach. Our kindly principal further assures Homer that the school promotes abstinence as one of many valid life-style choices, and that fifth-graders are being educated for “critical thinking” when making these life choices. (Ms. Goodthink does, however, omit the new, official Clintonesque definition of what is “a sexual relationship” since he didn’t ask and so she will not tell)
After a few feeble rejoinders, e.g., exploring sexual identity is just fancy talk for “fooling around,” a now muddle-brained Homer departs, yet one more conservative casualty in the culture war. Can you imagine Homer telling Marge that he plans, forthright, to explore his sexual identity, even pursue an “alternative lifestyle”? A one-way ticket to the couch, or worse. Everything from Ms Goodthink sounded so academic, so professional. He dared not question the value of diversity, or the need to help the at-risk, let alone deny learning opportunities to non-traditional students despite their refusals to enter the classroom. Nor did Homer summon up the courage to ask about these newly arrived “minority students.” That might elicit a stereotypical reaction. And how could he oppose exploring alternatives for personal growth? He’s no dummy – he saw the bumper stickers in the school faculty parking lot, “Hate is Not a Family Value” and “You Cannot Fight Violence with Violence.” He is doomed.
What is to be done? Perhaps radicals guilty of twisting English should be indentified, photographed, addresses supplied, and put on a national Internet available list of Textual Deviants so parents can shield their children from them. Or, for the more activist minded, a national organization to root out this stealthy deviousness, perhaps a Mothers Against Linguistic Manipulation (MALM) and use school crossings to pass out pocket dictionaries translating the radical’s refurbished vocabulary back into standard English.
Elsewhere, conservatives might organize “rescue” operations for once honored terms that been conscripted into the radical arsenal. Homer can now learn, for example, that “discrimination” was not always evil, actually it means an ability to make fine distinctions and is often laudable, as in the phrase “a person of discriminating taste.” Further add that misused term, prejudice, a word now virtually synonymous with bigotry versus acquiring sound habits from experience that no longer require justification, for example, a prejudice against eating foul smelling food. Crib sheets can be prepared to explain how the term “underprivileged” is just an ideological weapon since it implies – without a shred of evidence-that those who are not “underprivileged” secured their status as a matter of right, not ability. A definition police, so to speak to combat the politically correct police. Their slogan might be “Take Back the Language before it Becomes Brain-Killing Newspeak.”
In the final analysis, tactics are less important than first realizing that definitions are the great prizes in today’s battle between good and evil. Recall what Orwell said about Newspeak in 1984: “It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc [English Socialism] – should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.” Communism was not defeated until we began applying honest descriptions – the USSR was a brutal tyranny that killed millions, not a noble though imperfectly administered experiment to uplift humanity by overcoming greed. The battle is everywhere and we have skipped over how Islamic terrorists have been sanitized into “militants” as if these folk were just holders of strong views.
Remember, clear thinking depends on vocabulary and we should take great care that words do not fall into the wrong hands. We are indeed in deep trouble when Bart, hiding in the broom closet so as to avoid dangerous stereotypes, is beaten up by at-risk students.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Robert Weissberg is emeritus professor of political science, University of Illinois-Urbana and currently an adjunct instructor at New York University Department of Politics (graduate). He has written many books, the most recent include The Limits of Civic Activism, Pernicious Tolerance: How teaching to "accept differences" undermines civil society and the forthcoming, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools: How both the Right and the Left have American education wrong (early 2010). Besides writing for professional journals, he has also written for magazines like the Weekly Standard and currently contributes to various blogs.
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The distinction between investment and expenditure is fundamental to economics. When talking about expenditure, Gordon Brown, self-styled Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, self-proclaimed economic genius (I have abolished boom and bust) and son of the manse with a strong moral compass,always refers to it as 'investment'.
posted by: Tom Cobbett
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:45 AM
Better late than never...
See Progressive Politically Correct Dictionary at:
http://www.earstohear.net/Separation/politicallycorrect.html
posted by: Gary Kelly
Monday, November 2, 2009 at 08:14 PM
