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To: rlmorel; ebiskit; TenthAmendmentChampion; Obadiah; Mind-numbed Robot; A.Hun; johnny7; ...
Here is this guy, writing this book back in the 1940’s, talking about what the lessons of socialism are and how people continually forget those lessons of history, and...here we are again 65 years later, and every single word he writes is applicable TODAY with absolutely no transposition or word substitution (although I admit, I have to continually transpose “conservative” for “liberal”...)
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.

The worst sufferer in this respect is the word ‘liberty’. It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have planners who promise us a ‘collective freedom’, which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians. ‘Collective freedom’ is not the freedom of the members of society, but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases. This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1394906/posts?page=23#23

At the start of the Twentieth Century the term "liberal" meant the same in America as it still does in the rest of the world - essentially, what is called "conservatism" in American Newspeak. Of course we "American Conservatives" are not the ones who oppose development and liberty, so in that sense we are not conservative at all. We actually are liberals.

But in America, "liberalism" was given its American Newspeak - essentially inverted - meaning in the 1920s (source: Safire's New Political Dictionary). The fact that the American socialists have acquired a word to exploit is bad enough; the real disaster is that we do not now have a word which truly descriptive of our own political perspective. We only have the smear words which the socialists have assigned to us. And make no mistake, in America "conservative" is inherently a negative connotation just as surely as marketers love to boldly proclaim that the product which they are flogging is NEW!

I have my own Newspeak-English dictionary:
objective :
reliably promoting the interests of Big Journalism. (usage: always applied to journalists who are members in good standing; never applied to anyone but a journalist)
liberal :
see "objective," except that the usage is reversed: (usage: never applied to any working journalist)
progressive :
see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").
moderate:
see "liberal." (usage: same as for "liberal").
centrist :
see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").
conservative :
rejecting the idea that journalism is a higher calling than providing food, shelter, clothing, fuel, and security; adhering to the dictum of Theodore Roosevelt that: "It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena (usage: applies to people who - unlike those labeled liberal/progressive/moderate/centrist, cannot become "objective" by getting a job as a journalist, and probably cannot even get a job as a journalist.)(antonym:"objective")
right-wing :
see, "conservative."
conservative :
opposed to radical change of the sort which promote the idea that assigns authority to "liberals" while leaving the responsibility with those who work to a bottom line and therefore are subject to second guessing.

12 posted on 07/08/2009 10:43:52 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The conceit of journalistic objectivity is profoundly subversive of democratic principle.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

BTTT


13 posted on 07/08/2009 10:46:36 AM PDT by E.G.C.
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
"Even among us we have planners who promise us a ‘collective freedom’, which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians.


14 posted on 07/08/2009 10:49:21 AM PDT by Earthdweller (Harvard won the election again...so what's the problem.......?)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion; rlmorel

Both of you FReepers are 1000x more enjoyable and rational than reading George F. Will.

(and I’d bet neither of you own a bowtie)


17 posted on 07/08/2009 1:09:58 PM PDT by PGalt
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

LOL...when I read your Newspeak-English translation table, I was struck at how similar it was to Ann Coulter’s reference table, although yours is much more gentlemanly!


21 posted on 07/08/2009 2:58:23 PM PDT by rlmorel ("The Road to Serfdom" by F.A.Hayek - Read it...today.)
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