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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
A Little Peace On The Side
In its attacks on the Right, the Left frequently employs the notion of "code words:" phrases of innocent appearance that conceal sinister intentions. For instance, we have this from two prominent Embarrassments-at-large to the United States Congress:
Politicians know this trick well. In 1994, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., likened tax cuts to racial epithets, saying, "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. They just say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" Later that year, Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y., used similar language to describe the Republicans' Contract With America: "These are people who are practicing genocide with a smile; they're worse than Hitler." [statements made during the debate over the Contract With America]
Ann Coulter, the great conservative provocateuse, characterized such rhetoric thus:
When arguments are premised on lies, there is no foundation for debate. You end up conceding to half the lies simply to focus on the lies of Holocaust-denial proportions. Kind and well meaning people find themselves afraid to talk about politics. Any sentient person has to be concerned that he might innocently make an argument or employ a turn of phrase that will be discerned by the liberal cult as a "code word" evincing a genocidal tendency....Vast areas of public policy debate are treated as indistinguishable from using the N-word (aka: the worst offense against mankind....The spirit of the First Amendment has been effectively repealed for conservative speech by a censorious, accusatory mob. Truth cannot prevail because whole categories of thought are deemed thought crimes. [From Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right]
This use of the "code word" notion as a sword is generally understood among persons of conservative and libertarian inclinations, but less attention goes to the Left's use of code words as a shield: a screen of attractive but irrelevant concepts deployed to prevent critical examination of something they favor.
Consider the following, found at the head of this Web site:
Finding peace in this world we live in seems like a daunting task. We watch as our own government is unmasked to reveal it's naked aggression, it's use of torture in the name of freedom and it's unholy alliance with corporate power and right wing religious extremists. Where are they taking our nation and and do we as a people even care anymore about peace, social justice and truth?
Ignore the strange grammar and punctuation if you can. Ponder rather the implications of the statement, whose maker is undoubtedly in favor of "peace, social justice, and truth"...by her own interpretation, anyway. Read the most recent half-dozen of her posts and try to determine for yourself what her definitions of those things would be.
They surely sound good, though, don't they?
"Peace" by the norms of the liberals usually means surrender to socialist and communist insurrections, which they call "reform movements." "Social justice" by their lights means the erection of ever-larger transfer programs and laws that offer preferential treatment to their favored mascot-groups. "Truth" to a liberal...well, an Eternity Road reader is more than capable of judging for himself. But the terms themselves carry so pretty an aura that virtually no one is willing to compel their elucidation. So liberals get to hide their true intentions behind them: spinelessness before the march of totalitarians and thugs worldwide; exploding government spending and the ceaseless proliferation of laws that infringe upon freedom of speech, association, commerce, and the rights of private property; and the negation of objective standards by which statements of fact might be deemed pertinent to an issue and subjected to critical evaluation.
Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek was especially harsh about the pseudo-concept of "social justice." Justice, he pointed out, refers to two things:
- A state of affairs in which each individual has that which is his by right;
- A process invoked to investigate situations alleged to be unjust and to correct them as necessary.
The two meanings are tied together inextricably. A justice process cannot function to any advantage unless one can determine the just state of affairs toward which it must strive. But to determine that endpoint, one must concede that it once existed in reality, or that it would have existed except for an injustice that prevented it. This is impossible except by defining the rights of Man and specifying them for the particular persons in the controversy at hand. Thus, it is inherently an individualist premise; it cannot be "socialized" except by destroying the objective basis for the very thing it seeks to protect.
Of course, socializing everything in sight is what the Left is all about. In liberals' ideal world, every imaginable human action is either compulsory or forbidden. There would nominally be "laws," but there would be administrators and commissions -- staffed wholly by liberals, of course -- with unreviewable plenipotentiary power to interpret those laws. Elections and legislatures would become meaningless; infinite power would rest in the hands of persons whose decisions could not be challenged, and who could be removed from their thrones only by death. That's the precondition for all "progress" by these "progressives'" lights.
But for anyone to perform that analysis aloud must be prevented. It would give the game away in a rather final manner. So rather than campaign for infinite power for liberal mandarins, they prattle about "social justice," and hope that no one notices the opposition between the first word and the second.
The thickness of the miasma that steams from such rhetoric -- accusations of "code word" employment by persons on the Right; deployment of "code word" defenses to avert critical analysis of the notions of persons on the Left -- makes it all but impossible to find a route back to wholesome, constructive discourse. Worse, calling a liberal on it is a glove hurled in his face. The fundamentally decent ones mostly lack the insight to see what their rhetoric really means. The indecent ones cannot abide the imputation that their favorite tactic is a tip to their dishonesty. Which suggests that the Era of Code Words is likely to hang around for a long time to come.
Comments
Heh. When asked, if he were given absolute power, what the first thing he would do, Confusious supposedly said that he would rectify names.
But I really think that the phenomenon of ‘code-words’ has more to do with how natural it is for people to think in theoretical constructs than out of pernicious intent. Even among the wacked out true believers (I’m thinking of people on Andrea Dwarkin or Michael Moore or Howard Dean’s level). Never actually engaging any republicans’ ideas, they can’t see how any human being would believe republicans’ conclusions. Human nature requires us to explain the existence even of things that we don’t understand: hence the existence of the “code words” phenomenon.
Part of my evidence is that the phenomenon has its counterpart in the reverse. Witness the way that so many of us took the word “diplomacy” in John Kerry’s mouth to mean, more or less, for “abject surrender to the United Nations, Europe, or anyone else who eats cheese and will accept”, when in truth he probably meant something closer to “we’ll buy them off because all people are just as soulless and concerned with comfort as all my friends are.” Hm. Maybe I should have picked an example that I can stand more.
But do you see what I mean?
Posted by Chris on 09/12/2006 at 04:00 PMOh, come on, it’s not that hard to fight back. “There is nothing liberal about speech codes, and the only thing progressive about regressive statism is its creep.”
This has been the subject of one of my rants that I have never published (though I did build my glossary as a sort of defense). It all boils down to powerhungerers having stolen key words of our language, and the rest of us letting them keep it as if their claim was well established as result of some sort of “I claimed it first” game to which we all had signed on to. Except I did not sign, dammit!
So, I am saddened to see Our Curmudgeon so graciously accepting this defeat as a fait accompli.
See, I am not sure it is so much a matter of a code word war as one of those with sense of decency gaining control of the next mainstream form of media and enforcing the use of words there only where they really apply.
There is nothing liberal about speech codes, and the only thing progressive about regressive statism is its creep.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 09/12/2006 at 06:13 PMWhy not restate truth exhaustively? “There is nothing liberal about speech codes, and the only thing progressive about repressive statism is its creep.”
This has been the subject of one of my rants that I have never published (though I did build my glossary as a sort of defense). It all boils down to powerhungerers having stolen key words of our language, and the rest of us letting them keep it as if their claim was well established as result of some sort of “I claimed it first” game to which we all had signed on to. Except I did not sign, dammit!
So, I am saddened to see Our Curmudgeon so graciously accepting this defeat as a fait accompli.
See, I am not sure it is so much a matter of a code word war as one of those with sense of decency gaining control of the next mainstream form of media and enforcing the use of words there only where they really apply.
There is nothing liberal about speech codes, and the only thing progressive about repressive statism is its creep.
Posted by Pascal (the derivative) on 09/12/2006 at 06:25 PMI have a “code word” that works pretty well. “Honey? get me the bat, please”.
I am becoming more and more convinced that nothing else will suffice.
Posted by og on 09/13/2006 at 08:27 AM>> spinelessness before the march of totalitarians and thugs worldwide; exploding government spending and the ceaseless proliferation of laws that infringe upon freedom of speech, association, commerce, and the rights of private property; and the negation of objective standards by which statements of fact might be deemed pertinent to an issue and subjected to critical evaluation. <<
I’ll be printing this out and putting it in my cubicle in a big font - thank you Mr Porretto.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/13/2006 at 08:40 AMThe inherent mendacity in the leftist argumentarium is one reason why I (try to) refuse to play on their turf. Call them on their Barbra Streisand. If they “j’accuse” you with lies, throw them back in their faces. Turn it around on them.
My old man, the Colonel, when accused of being a neanderthal male chauvinist pig would cheerfully own it. “Damned straight, I am!” he say. Those who knew him understood better and those who didn’t—or refused to try to—understand him were of less than no concern to him.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 09/13/2006 at 08:53 AM“Code words” are soft and comfortable. They can be flung around generously knowing fully that engines will crank, and in the political world, the press will descend eagerly.
Left, right, snaggle-toothed, backways, whatever; we owe it to our National Health to not use code words and be more plain-spoken. It this is coming from a slantways, journeyman futurist who thinks Spongebob Squarepants should be knighted!
Posted by T-Steel on 09/13/2006 at 03:25 PMI read of the Libs and I hear their rants; yet I wonder where they think they’ll be should what they pray for comes true. Having their latte? Probably not.
Posted by Beach Girl on 09/14/2006 at 01:12 PMYou can view the latest subject to be engulfed by concerns for ‘social justice’ here:
http://commonsensewonder.com/?p=1209
Posted by John Hudock on 09/14/2006 at 02:03 PMMy idea of social justice is in this quote:
“When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean ... to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing.”
—Theodore RooseveltPosted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/15/2006 at 10:00 AMT-steel.
You are quite right. The most horrifying of all the codewords wasn’t quite in vogue yet when Our Curmudgeon penned his convergence of the death cult series.
The word of which I speak has that has the kind of soft and comfortable sound that you point out. Sort of promises survival, but….
Posted by Pascal (the derivative) on 09/20/2006 at 06:58 PM
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