Pop Quiz:
What poet said: “Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation.”?
What English author said: “Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study.”?
What Jewish author wrote: “Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.”?
What poet wrote: “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”?
Answers at the end of this post.
Herbert Marcuse, anarchic societal wrecking ball, believed in “linguistic therapy” by which he meant changing the meaning of words to suit your political needs. Today’s political discourse is no longer civil but rather cacophonous. This is in large part because we no longer have a common parlance. Let’s compare the definitional stylings of the Therapist and Mr. Webster.
Lies
The Therapist: Anything that Trump says with which the listener disagrees.
Mr. Webster: Untrue statements made with intent to deceive.
Capitalism
The Therapist: An economic system designed to maintain the white male hierarchy for the purpose of oppressing everybody else.
Mr. Webster: Practicing free enterprise in order to provide quality products for consumers at a reasonable price without regard to race, sex or ethnicity.
Nazi
The Therapist: Any person with whom Rachel Madcow disagrees.
Mr. Webster: A member of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
Diversity
The Therapist: Mandatory inclusion of non-white, non-male and non-straight people on any team…as long as they all think alike.
Mr. Webster: Being composed of differing elements or qualities…and viewpoints,
Equity
The Therapist: All outcomes are identical, e.g. all 30,000 runners in the Boston Marathon finish at the same time, every employee makes $50 per hour and everyone gets a trophy.
Mr. Webster: A system of justice according to natural law or right under which everyone is treated equally.
Freedom of Speech
The Therapist: The absolute untrammeled right to say whatever the Left approves of, specifically excluding mis and disinformation as determined by the Ministry of Truth.
Mr. Webster: That which is protected by the First Amendment…the absolute untrammeled right to say whatever you think with the sole exception of fire in a crowded theater.
Freedom of Religion
The Therapist: Freedom to practice any religion except Christianity. Caveat: You can be Jewish but don’t even think about having a homeland.
Mr. Webster: The right to choose what religion to follow and to worship without interference, including Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Mami Wata.
Right to Freely Assemble
The Therapist: The right to protest mostly peacefully with the understanding that you can destroy property and intimidate those who wish to live peacefully.
Mr. Webster: The right to freely assemble as set forth in the First Amendment.
Genocide
The Therapist: Any action by Israel that defends the right of Israel to exist. Does not apply to the extermination of Israel and the Jewish inhabitants thereof or the elimination of American deplorables and anyone who believes in MAGA.
Mr. Webster: The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. Exemplified horrifically by the Shoah which according to renowned historian Ilhan Omar never happened.
Censorship
The Therapist: Protecting the citizenry from facts, data and specific information that graduates of Ivy League schools find inconvenient, embarrassing or likely to challenge the edifice of the power of the Deep State.
Mr. Webster: A system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express and prevents books. films. works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public because they include or support certain ideas that are contrary to the approved wisdom.
Social Justice
The Therapist: The use of the justice system to force equity and social “science” on an uninformed public.
Mr. Webster: Adherence to principles set forth in the U.S. Constitution.
This can be addressed by a strong education system…let’s get started.
Answers to the Pop Quiz:
“Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation.” Congressional Gold Medal recipient Robert Frost
“Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study.” Aldous Huxley author of Brave New World
“Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.” Yehuda Berg
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Rudyard Kipling, creator of Gunga Din
Linda Strawbridge
I always enjoy reading your work. It makes us think and want to know more. Linda C Strawbridge
G Morehead
One more:
Who said do As I say not as I do?
admin
Richard Nixon for one
Ron
The democrat party has long since mastered the art of using (or mis-using) language to control what a huge portion of the population thinks.
Some poignant examples:
The “Inflation Reduction Act” is the single most inflationary Congressional act since Jimmy Carter.
The “Constitutional Right to an Abortion” can neither be found nor inferred from any wording in the Constitution.
“Mostly peaceful demonstrations” now include unrivaled violence and multi billion dollar acts of property destruction.
Their redefinition of the meaning of language is a direct result of the cleansing of the American educational system of teaching the art of thinking.