True meaning of rhetoric should be uncensored
By Alec Mouhibian
Nov. 28, 2005 9:00 p.m.
In 1946, George Orwell wrote that political language had hit
rock bottom. Rhetoric has worsened since. What Orwell stomped on
turned out to be the ceiling of a whole lower level.
All you have to do is stroll down Bruin Walk, and you’re
bound to hear opponents of fossil fuels declaring their hopes to
“drive out” the Bush regime.
Television viewers don’t have to go far, or even turn to
CNN, to experience lousy political jive. I’ve seen nothing
more explicitly Orwellian than those “Girls Gone Wild”
commercials, where the bare breasts are covered by a bar that says
“uncensored.”
The real problem with the scene of current debate isn’t a
lack of kindness but the very terms of debate, which are idiotic on
many levels.
The lowest level features cheap slurs. We’ve all heard
them before. Conservatives are racist, sexist, fascist, stubborn,
stupid. Liberals are cowardly, arrogant, evil, treasonous.
Such name-calling isn’t always inaccurate. Liberals may be
right about the stubborn part, and conservatives may be right about
the evil part. But the main purpose behind these is to replace an
honest understanding of opposing viewpoints with hot-button words,
making it easier to get angry and feel important.
Because of my general right-wing status, liberals interested in
feeling anti-Puritanical have frequently presumed that I am against
pre-marital sex. This is always offensive, given that I am actually
against marital sex. And I know I’m not the only right-winger
who believes in the separation of self and mate.
Not far above the slurs is the state of political labels. The
problem with polarizing labels is not their existence, but their
confused definitions.
Too many conservatives don’t know whether they want to
conserve American political values ““ or religious
“traditional” values to which the founders were largely
opposed. And how advocates of unlimited government can honestly
call themselves liberal ““ which derives from the Latin
“to be free” ““ is beyond me.
The left has recently brought “progressive” out of
storage, without dusting it. Progressive is a meaningless word
implying nothing other than an aversion to individual rights, which
don’t change over time, and a belief that government should
be like a cancer. You can’t “progress” from
freedom. To deny that the language problem is deeper on the left
would be as ludicrous as denying that is common across the
spectrum.
Then there are popular issue-specific terms that connote general
emotions rather than precise ideas. Most of these terms are mere
wrappers of rotten candy.
Take “exploitation,” for example. Imagine how much
cleaner the globalization debate would be if the anti-capitalists,
instead of screaming exploitation, just said what they meant
““ namely, that companies should be forced to shut down their
factories in third-world countries so all their poor workers can go
unemployed or earn half as much in far worse conditions from some
local job.
As Orwell said, “If thought corrupts language, language
can also corrupt thought.” Decency is not the only victim of
an illiterate political vocabulary. Liberty is as well.
People of every color, creed and social standing can share a
common bond in their desire to impose power on consensual behavior.
Thus, most of their empty phrases are mere euphemisms for political
coercion.
Depriving farmers of their entire water supply can pass as
“healing the planet.” Shutting down a business for
being too successful can pass as “antitrust.”
Anything is allowed when words are detached from their
fundamental meanings.
In politics, the only fundamental conflict is between freedom
and force. Of course, it doesn’t help that a thousand
metaphorical definitions of freedom have to compete with the only
literal one ““ which is the protection of one’s right to
life, liberty and property from outside intrusion.
Although it’s been said many times and many ways, the
right and left need to better understand each other.
By understand, I don’t mean “like” or even
“not pour water on when drowning.” They should discover
the basic content and similarity of their own beliefs, so they can
realize how many need to be disposed of.
E-mail Mouhibian at [email protected].
