Since he's clamoring for it, I'm going to let Dad have the floor again:
I DISAGREE and refuse to go along.
-- Spike Souders
If you control the language, you can control the dialog. The leftist (Socialist/Communist) elite has known this truth and used it for more than 40 years. The time has come to take back our "common" American English from the misuse and changes pushed on us by our leftist "betters". Here are several examples of overstretched terms I refuse to use any longer:
FIRST - Racism/Racist and the very wrong expansion of race to way beyond:
"a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits; or : an actually or potentially interbreeding group within a species; also: a taxonomic category (such as a subspecies) representing such a group"
I refuse to subscribe to the growth of the term RACE to apply to any cultural sub-group seeking preferential treatment from our government -- or the growth of the pejoratives "RACIST" and "RACISM" to apply to the perceived privileged class (like me).
(My privilege was to work steadily for 45.5 years before retiring. One job was 7 days a week -- with a shift from 0645 until 2300 on 6 of those days. I used to joke I had 23 good days in that job: the 22 days of leave my boss allowed and the day I left.
On another job, meanwhile, I carried a pager and was on call 24/7. I was paged away from dinner with my wife multiple times to handle a problem with a sensitive, high-value system for a national agency. And by the way, I was on salary, so I got no bonus for answering middle-of-the-night calls.)
Hispanic or Puerto Rican or Islamic are different CULTURES -- and often several races are included in each culture. (Remember the "white Hispanic" when the liberal propaganda machine got a muscle cramp trying to demonize a law-abiding citizen assaulted by a thug of color?)
SECOND (and more subtle): JUSTICE.
That word is misused as a more palatable substitute for RETRIBUTION. Frequently those calling for "justice" don't want that, as it would result in a long prison term or execution for serious crimes (like aggravated assault or battery or attempted murder). They want retribution without any examination of the facts and undeserved punishment meted out to the people protecting ME from their mob -- or to the people who happen to share an immutable characteristic with historical malefactors.
I will just use retribution when discussing the leftist mob's desires from now on.
THIRD: SEXISM.
An important military leader (who happened to be black) once remarked:
"there is nothing more benign than the color of a persons skin; nor anything more fundamental to human behavior than their sexuality . . ."
The leftist elite's effort to broaden the definition of sexuality to cover an ever-widening array of alphabet soup identities (LGBTQPAN+) makes most of us confused and on the defensive lest we impugn a privileged sub-group. Foo on that. What you do among yourselves is of no concern to me -- but try to demand special status for your sub-group and I JUST SAY NO. There, I knew I'd find a spot to say that.
Further examples of corrupted words are welcome in the comments.
CAPITALISM. Karl Marx popularized this term and defined it for the masses in Das Kapital. It was actually a derogatory term he used for "economic freedom". The word eventually stuck so that those now attempting to defend freedom are in the uncomfortable position of defending a derogation.
ReplyDeleteMany (too many) years ago I was in basic law enforcement training and one of the head instructors gave us his definition of justice.
ReplyDelete"Justice" is mercy for the guilty and revenge for the wronged.
He was not incorrect.
Liberalism! It's very different than what Von Mises described.
ReplyDeleteRe: old tropes of "the Irish race," there was a time when it did mostly mean ethnicity. But there was about eighty years after Darwin when those comments were connected with pictures of brachycephalic heads, descriptions of hair colors and textures, etc., as well as talking about the low mental capacity of Irish people, oversexed and criminal nature, inferior literature and arts, blah blah blah. Everything else, like MacManus' Story of the Irish Race, was talking that way for the purpose of countering that crud.
ReplyDeleteI've read that the word "Nazi" is actually a mocking slang term meaning something like "bumpkin." National Socialists apparently never referred to themselves or their party as Nazis.
ReplyDelete