Roger Kimball wrote an article in a recent Epoch Times entitled, “How ‘1984’ has become a How-To Manual.” As he sees it, NewSpeak is a core part of the agenda to restructure conversation to adapt to the Dem’s political ideology. Even Aldous Huxley thought it would take until 2050 for this language to take hold.
Words Matter
All words have denotations—dictionary definitions—and connotations—meanings based on context or common usage in an area. But what’s happening to language has no relation to either meaning. In this case, as in 1984, words mean what someone wants them to mean, regardless of whether they have this meaning or not.
Some examples might include “mostly peaceful protests” aka BLM riots versus “terrorist insurrection/siege/riot,” used to describe the activities of January 6th. A casual look at pictures taken by bystanders and reporters of both events and a study of the statistics shows that these phrases don’t mean what the general public thinks they do.
“The summer 2020 riots resulted in some 15 times more injured police officers, 30 times as many arrests, and estimated damages in dollar terms up to 1,300 times more costly than those of the Capitol riot,” RealClearInvestigations noted in their analysis.
“Safe spaces” in schools includes banning books that might upset someone, even as the kids are in school to learn and expand their understanding of humanity. Ideas are similarly censored with those abiding by the rules given social credits for going along with the new ideology. Similarly, critical race theory, which sounds like simply ensuring that children learn some Black history, instead penalizes one group for the color of their skin, while advantaging all other colors.
I confess to having to look up the phrase “racist dog whistle,” as I had no
idea what they were getting at. After all, a dog whistle is something only a dog can hear. But this phrase is thrust against any enemy, typically a Republican, when the words spoken disadvantage the causes that the Left cherishes. But here’s the problem. We can’t actually hear a dog whistle, so one has to believe that what you don’t hear doesn’t impact you. The Left claims that the hidden messages are artfully concealed in campaign speeches, but just like a dog whistle, the fact that you don’t hear something can equally mean that nothing happened. This phrase was most recently used in the successful VA election for governor, where ironically (or perhaps not), the winning Lt. Governor is a black woman, Winsome Sears. Of course, if you are Black and a Republican, “you ain’t Black,” as Biden noted.
The Real Goal
In China, behavior conforming to government standards earns you privileges, such as the ability to go to college, ride a bus or board a plane. Credits must be earned by “good” behavior and can be taken away based on non-conformance or dissidence. Does this sound familiar?
We’ve actually been warned of this outside of Orwell’s thesis. As Kimball noted, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton worshipped at the knee of Saul Alinsky, who wrote in his book, “Rules for Radicals:
“He who controls the language controls the masses.”
Are these two books warning us, or are they instead training manuals for the Left? Freedom is at the core of how we see ourselves as Americans. Those freedoms are delineated in the Bill of Rights with freedom of speech leading the list. What happened to that freedom? I remember in the ‘60’s when the Nazis marched in Skokie that the ACLU defended them in court. Not because they approved of the speech, but because even the ACLU realized that protecting speech means not restricting it, except in cases where it can lead to physical harm. The problem is that now, the Left believes that speech itself is so harmful that it must be constrained. What happened to “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me?”
Chipping away at the Bill of Rights clearly shows that the goal of the Left is to repeal it entirely, ceding to themselves (the smart people in the room) the right to say what you can and cannot do. Is this what America wants?
In my Red:Blue conversations with Braver Angels members, I would tell you that the answer is no.
And if your answer is “yes,” consider moving to China. You’re going to love it there.
