The Value-Laden Language of the Left

As Nietzsche presciently observed over a hundred years ago: "All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside-down."

Political nomenclature has always tended to be value-laden. Start with the watershed movement known as "the Enlightenment." The term itself means coming into the light — i.e., gaining information and knowledge and thus advancing, first intellectually but not only that way. It also involves exercising one's intellectual power to better understand the world, to educate oneself and, on a macrocosmic level, help engender socio-political advancement through the use of scientific scrutiny. In other words, becoming enlightened is emerging from Plato's cave.

When the Enlightenment began in the eighteenth century, the shadows in the cave mistaken for reality were religious constructs and belief systems. Like everything else, they too must be subjected to intellectual rigor. As Kant noted in his Critique of Pure Reason, everything, including religion, must be analyzed through scientific and rational analysis. Whatever fails the rigorous test of intellectual scrutiny, including religion, must be cast aside as an anachronism, or worse.

The term "enlightenment" is thus charged with an intellectual force. Who indeed doesn't want to be enlightened? What person or what movement wants to be considered "ignorant," the opposite of "enlightened"?

I think the Left is at war with Reality. Post-modernism is not as “au courant” as it once was, but that worldview basically argued that there is no such think at Truth. Things are what you say they are, for you. I think the Left largely holds on to that. There are 52 genders if they say there are 52 genders.

What I really think is that the Left wants pretzel logic. They want things to make no sense. They want to confuse people. They want the Truth of yesterday to be False today and the Truth of today to be False tomorrow.

If they can use language and hypocrisy to create a world in which no one has any idea what is “right” (morally or otherwise) then they have carte blanche and can control anything and everything.

I think this was visible decades ago when the Marxists practiced gobbledygook about the praxis of the hegemony of the underlying patriarchal superstructure leading to reification of the masses. They just say stuff and if you’re too stupid to understand, then you are forced aside while the smart people (ex. Hunter Biden) run the world and get rich.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.