Tongues Twisted Left: Manipulating Minds by Managing Words
It has long been noted that disagreements can be won by massaging the definition of words. Liberals repeatedly apply this lesson to influence the culture.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.” This passage, from Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking-Glass (1872), has been cited in at least 250 U.S. judicial decisions (with our judges, one wonders if it was in condemnation of lawyers’ arguments or in justification of their own). But what about when language engineers use words to master us?
Pining after the good ol’ days, Archie Bunker sang of the time when “girls were girls and men were men”; now using the word “girls” can be deemed offensive, and a University of Florida student had his grade lowered for using “man” in an essay. “Girls” are supposed to be women, except when feminists call them “womyn” as they try to purge men. Then there were the training documents at a Lincoln, Nebraska, middle school advising teachers not to call “students ‘boys and girls’ or ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ but to instead use more generic expressions like campers, readers, athletes or even purple penguins,” reported NebraskaWatchdog.org in 2014. Because boys and girls are, you know, so yesterday.
Of course, it’s tempting to just laugh this off as so much nonsense, until you realize that those pushing it are deathly serious — and deadly to society. Oh, it’s not that we’ll be universally referring to children as penguins anytime soon. The reality, however, is that social engineers have long been transforming our language and twisting our tongues left. Why, for example, do so many of us use “African-American” instead of “black,” “underprivileged” and not “poor,” “gender” in place of “sex,” “entitlements” as opposed to “handouts,” and “gay” instead of “homosexual”? Why would we view “masculinism” as something bizarre but accept that “feminism” can be a good thing? And how much does any of this really matter?
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