{"id":9639,"date":"2016-11-28T12:55:31","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T20:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9639"},"modified":"2016-11-29T08:33:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T16:33:51","slug":"enemies-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/enemies-of-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Enemies of Language"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review<\/em><\/div>\n

What would happen if conservatives started to change the words we use for political ends?<\/p>\n

Throughout history, revolutionaries of all stripes have warped the meaning of words to subvert reality.<\/p>\n

And now here we go again, with another effort \u2014 spearheaded by the media and universities \u2014 to use any linguistic means necessary to achieve political ends.<\/p>\n

\u201cSanctuary city\u201d is a euphemism for the local and state nullification of federal law \u2014 a subversive tactic that dates back to the nullification crises during the Andrew Jackson administration and, later, in the years leading up to the Civil War.<\/p>\n

This makes a mockery of the simple constitutional principle that cities and states cannot subversively pick and choose which federal laws to obey.<\/p>\n

The term \u201csanctuary\u201d would never apply to conservative jurisdictions that in similar fashion sought to offer \u201csanctuary\u201d to those dissidents who disobeyed federal gun registration, income tax, or environmental laws.<\/p>\n

College administrators boast of offering counseling and therapeutic help to students and faculty members distraught over the recent election. They use terms like \u201cdivisive\u201d and \u201cpolarizing\u201d in describing the election, when in truth they wish to hide from their donors, alumni, and half the country their own abject and one-sided contempt for incoming president-elect Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Note that in the highly emotional elections of 2008 and 2012, universities did not offer commensurate counseling services \u2014 because their own preferred candidate won and was thus his victory was not \u201cpolarizing.\u201d Once upon a time, campuses did not worry about whether independent faculty and conservative students were sullen and depressed in adolescent style over the implications of President-elect Barack Obama\u2019s radical promises to \u201cfundamentally change America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campus \u201csafe space\u201d is another vocabulary distortion. Such places are often set-aside spots that actually discriminate on the basis of race or gender.<\/p>\n

Likewise, college \u201ctheme houses\u201d often admit residents on the basis of segregation by ethnicity or race \u2014 in a way that would have been considered deplorable during the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, the word \u201csegregation\u201d has now virtually disappeared from our vocabulary because it could more likely apply to left-wing rather than right-wing protocols.<\/p>\n

\u201cMicroaggression\u201d is certainly not aggression as usually defined. Instead, the term seeks to stifle free expression on the principle that one can still be dubbed a racist or sexist by saying something that normally would not offend anyone \u2014 at least not without arcane academic inventions of bias.<\/p>\n

Both right-wing Nazi Germany and the left-wing Soviet Union banned old words and created new words that furthered political agendas and warped reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrigger warning\u201d should mean that readers or viewers are advised that literature or media could be obscene or threatening. In fact, this one-sided term only applies to material \u2014 from Roman elegiac poetry to the works of Mark Twain \u2014 deemed potentially hurtful or unfair by 21st century progressive standards of race, class, and gender. No one on campus is given a trigger warning before reading the left-wing manifestos of Eldridge Cleaver or Malcolm X, despite their calls for violence.<\/p>\n

There are also lots of Orwellian nouns and adjectives to describe those from other countries who broke federal immigration laws to enter and reside in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cIllegal alien\u201d used to be a neutral and descriptive legal term \u2014 one still preferred by the Supreme Court \u2014 but is now seen as counterproductive to the agendas of the open-borders movement. Thus the more inexact \u201cundocumented alien\u201d followed, although few who entered illegally ever had immigration \u201cdocuments\u201d of any sort. Next came the term \u201cundocumented immigrant\u201d \u2014 on the theory that the ancient word \u201calien\u201d (from the Latin word alienus, meaning \u201cbelonging to another\u201d) is offensive and also unhelpful to the open-borders project.<\/p>\n

Finally, the ambiguous word \u201cmigrant\u201d is being used to suggest that there is really no difference between entering and exiting a country under any circumstances.<\/p>\n

The danger of destroying rules of language is that revolutionaries of any stripe can join this crooked game.<\/p>\n

What if a right-wing movement wished to redefine \u201csanctuary cites\u201d as \u201csubversive cities\u201d?<\/p>\n

Would it be any more biased to call the sites of university post-election counseling services \u201cprogressive lamentation centers\u201d?<\/p>\n

Would a visitor from Mars be less confused about \u201csafe spaces\u201d if they were rebranded by right-wingers as \u201csegregated set-asides\u201d? Would \u201cmicroaggressions\u201d be better understood if they were renamed \u201cnanno thought crimes\u201d?<\/p>\n

Perhaps \u201ctrigger warnings\u201d could be rephrased by counter-revolutionaries as \u201ccensorship protocols\u201d?<\/p>\n

Of course, no one would like such linguistic payback.<\/p>\n

There would be howls of protest if the new Trump administration rebranded extraconstitutional executive orders as \u201cpen and phone liberation acts,\u201d or named its substitute for Obamacare \u201cThe Real Affordable Care Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

To prevent this endless cycle of corrupting words, members of the media and academia should act as our linguistic guardians. Instead, for short-term political gain, they have abandoned their professional responsibilities to become our worst subverters of language.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review What would happen if conservatives started to change the words we use for political ends? Throughout history, revolutionaries of all stripes have warped the meaning of words to subvert reality. And now here we go again, with another effort \u2014 spearheaded by the media and universities \u2014 to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1092,79,383,495,46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2vt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9281,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nihilism-of-sanctuary-cities\/","url_meta":{"origin":9639,"position":0},"title":"The Nihilism of Sanctuary Cities","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Works and Days by PJ Media There are an estimated 300 or so jurisdictions -- entire states, counties, cities, and municipalities -- that since the early 1980s have enacted \u201csanctuary city\u201d laws, forbidding full enforcement of federal immigration law within their jurisdictions. Most of these\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net\/e1\/victordavishanson\/user-content\/2\/files\/2015\/07\/juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10876,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-resistance-to-nullification-to-what-next\/","url_meta":{"origin":9639,"position":1},"title":"From Resistance to Nullification to What Next?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \u2014 National Review Trump\u2019s critics ratchet up to insurrection, but Trump\u2019s tax reforms and our growing economy could derail their dreams. George H. W. 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More than 1,800 immigrants that the federal government wanted to deport were nevertheless released from local jails and later re-arrested for various crimes, according to a government report released Monday, July 13, 2015. (Michael Macor\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1-500x348.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8650,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-descent-into-lawlessness\/","url_meta":{"origin":9639,"position":4},"title":"America\u2019s Descent into Lawlessness","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Do you remember Lewis \u201cScooter\u201d Libby? In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame. 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Citizens quickly lose faith in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9641,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9639\/revisions\/9641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}