Vulgarity: the style of our days

As an ambitious young man in his teens, George Washington copied 110 rules of good manners from an English courtesy book of the previous century. He studied and "committed to the memory" these rules of genteel behavior because he realized that to rise in society, one must know how to behave, speak, and dress as a gentleman. One of the rules, which touches on the subject of this article, was simple and categorical: "Use no reproachful language against anyone, neither curse nor revile."[1]

I am sorry to say most young and ambitious persons today would laugh at such advice. We are living in an age when insulting others and 'sassing' family and friends are considered good humor. Cursing is so common that even the most obscene profanities are heard in homes and classrooms. And language in general has lost a polished tone and is becoming increasingly vulgar and prosaic. Some might foolishly call this a byproduct of the uninhibited freedom of modernity. I would qualify it differently: I would call it the fruit of the egalitarian Revolution that aims to do away with everything that distinguishes, refines, and ennobles.

"Language is the dress of thought," is the famous statement of Samuel Johnson, who was only translating the words of a Roman, Quintillion. If what you wear reflects what you are, then your style of speech indicates your thinking. The Sorbonne cultural revolution of the 20th century did not affect only dress and manners, but also speech, which has become correspondingly vulgar and egalitarian. Most certainly, it reflects modern thought born from a revolutionary and egalitarian philosophy.

The revolutionaries of the French Revolution who preached a false liberty from tradition and past conventions were motivated by the perverse desire to be free of all proprieties and formalities, all the dictates of the established order. They wanted to turn everything upside down, to toss out everything monarchical and aristocratic from the Old Regime. For example, one of their first mandates was that all should be addressed as “Citizen,” because they wanted to abolish all titles and courtesies of address of Christian Civilization.

If we analyze our history, we can see that in many senses we received a similar revolutionary influence. What has today come to be called the American spirit has certain parallels with the egalitarian and unrestrained way of presenting oneself that characterized the French Revolution.

Most of us today have been formed from the time we were young in the school of casualness and practicality. There is a natural tendency to reject formalities and embrace the vulgar, to revolt against the manners and speech of a genteel society in favor of a more relaxed and casual attitude and way of being. In the revolution of the 1960s, this expanded to include revolt against any and all conventions as part of the "right" one had to be oneself. In fact, this desire to break with conventions and order, to revolt against logic and hierarchy, to say whatever one wants whenever one likes, is at depth a principle contrary to all order.

Therefore, the Catholic who would truly like to fight the egalitarian trend in temporal society, the Catholic who truly desires a restoration of Christian Civilization, would by principle choose to love everything that is cultivated, elevating, and ennobling, and likewise avoid everything that is ignoble, base, and coarse. This includes vulgar and egalitarian language.

Some years ago, when I was a principal of a girls’ school, a mother came into my office to complain about her children's foul language. To describe the horrible words she was hearing, she herself used a scatological term.

"Don't you think that perhaps it might be better not to use words like that if you want to set a good example for your children?" I asked. The lady looked surprised. "That isn't really a bad word, just a little crass. You should hear the words they are using!"

What the good lady did not realize was that the revolution in language is like that in dress and customs. It is a process. Like the snowball at the top of mountain, little revolutionary habits and customs can seem small at the outset, but by the time the snowball has reached the bottom of the mountain, it has the speed and weight to cause enormous damage. If a lady begins to pepper her speech with little "harmless" vulgarities, she is preparing her children to use more offensive and perhaps even blasphemous terms. And by the time the grandchildren appear, she will be stunned to find households like the “Ozzies,” one of the latest TV shows that I've heard is teeming with violently vulgar language employed regularly by both parents and children.

There is only one effective way to stop the eventual avalanche of vulgarity. It is to stop the snowball before it begins its descent. Absolutely no profanity or vulgarity.

Then, a kind of inoculation against the vulgar must be administered. How? The most effective way I know is by cultivating a taste for refined speech and manners in the home to keep its members from becoming co-natural with the vulgar. I remember the violent shock I felt in high school the first time I heard some classmates using profanities with great naturality. I remember a second shock as I realized that these popular terms and blasphemies seemed part of a code that opened the doors to popularity. Thanks to the general good ambience of my home, I could not adopt the code. I cannot even imagine what today's young men and women in high school - and much younger - have to face.

Given the advanced stage of the revolutionary process we are facing, it is not enough to simply eschew outright profanities and vulgar expressions to re-cultivate the Catholic spirit in the home. It is necessary to make a real effort to confront the egalitarian trend of language that aims at abolishing formal niceties and genteel speech.

Good manners and fine speech used to be a mark of a refined person, a socially distinguishing mark. "Yes, she was a Daughter of the Sacred Heart," implied an education where girl learned not only algebra and history, but also the social arts. She was educated to be a lady. Likewise, a young man with fine education was a gentleman. Following an age-old Christian chivalric code, he knew how to act in society, with special polished manners he employed as a sign of respect for ladies – yes, even for his sisters, and especially for his mother.

It is a sign of a degenerate and disintegrating society when even the "well-bred" or wealthy no longer aspire to fine manners and cultivated speech in private as well as public life, but prefer a world of banalities. After forty years of the Cultural Revolution, persons of all classes and professions have become co-natural with the vulgar, the common, and the casual. The language we hear around us reflects an egalitarian impulse toward leveling all speech and thinking to the most basic and elementary. I don’t need to provide examples. One need only turn on the radio or television to hear the slang and loose tone of everyday conversation.

Many persons have become acclimated to this kind of modern egalitarian ambience where everything, including language, is easygoing, informal, and trendy. When they look to the past and consider the small disciplines of courtesy born from Christian Civilization, such as "If you permit me, sir," "I'd be delighted," "Could you be so kind as to wait one moment?” "What is the state of her health?" they are amused or even revolted. How old-fashioned! What a waste of words and time…

Why? Because of an egalitarian trend in culture that wants to break with everything – including language – that has form and polish, everything that is elevated and refined. This mentality is worthy of repulse, because it professes a love for what is low, common, and vulgar. Ultimately, it ends in the modern taste for the monstrous and blasphemous.

The anti-egalitarian Catholic is opposed not just to the leveling of the hierarchical structure of the Church. He abhors the leveling and vulgarization of everything in both the spiritual and temporal spheres. He seeks the most elevated in everything in order to admire what is above him and understand it as a reflection of the perfection and sublimity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He loves what is noble and elevated in the world because he loves God.

The restoration of Christian civilization will be effected by those non-egalitarian souls with a hierarchical spirit who always wants to see, know, and love what is more sublime and elevated. This includes language, the dress of thought.

As Ozzy would retort:

"Who the ---- gives a ----ing damn about this bunch of ----ing idiots on the ----ing Tele that no ----ing any ----ing body even knows the ---- about? Me foot ----ing hurts. Who told you this ----ing shit? You ----ing lying to me again? Whot, now you ----ing just want more ----ing money, ain't that it, you ----ing bitch. when the ----ing Queen is Kanightin me like McCartney, I'm ----ing gonna tell her about your ----ing trying to rip me off..You ain't got a chance, ya know, cause I am a cult hero. You ----ing know that, don't ya? Yer name's Sharon, right? How the ---- did you get in my ----ing house? Who the ---- are you and who the ---- are these ----ing odd children? "

Welcome to the molecular world of a burned out idiot.

A rehash just seemed the right thing to do...

I was raised to never curse around women, which is probably a compromise for when my forebears refused to stop cursing entirely. Things were OK when I moved my family to Canada in 1970. When we moved back in 1980, young women had acquired a filthy mouth they seemed proud of. Oddly, they didn't acquire the admonition to keep their curses between themselves and other women. They used every word I ever heard as if the language were every day parlor talk. It hasn't gotten any worse since, but then, how could it?

The trouble, of course, is that when you start limiting speech, where does one draw the line? Isn't that what political correctness is all about? Stifling speech under the guise of not offending others?

I bemoan the coarsening of our culture but I fail to see how my wearing blue jeans to work contributes to it. What I've seen in my lifetime is first the skills for putdown are acquired through situation comedy television and peer groups, next sex enters the picture, usually around the same time as alcohol and drugs. Finally, there is high school and college and - voila! - you have a crude, sex-obsessed lout with the courtesy and verbal skills of a motorcycle gang.

And because youth is all about shocking one's elders (even if it means lemming-like subserviance to the fashion trends of your antisocial peers), each new generation must find something even more offensive and shocking than the last one in order to establish their own boundaries.

Imagine when we've devolved to the point that courtesy, modesty and godliness becomes the trendy way to shock others. I suspect it will arrive in the next two or three generations.

"After forty years of the Cultural Revolution, persons of all classes and professions have become co-natural with the vulgar, the common, and the casual."

For the most part I agree with this article. There is far too much coarse behavior.

But when you start refering to people by class, you cross the line and become pompous. Part of the American Revolution was to do away with titles of nobility.

But it did not do away with classes. Quite the contrary: in most states there was an unmistakeable distinction between those who were propertied (and franchised) and those who were un-propertied. And a society that permits the ownership of slaves certainly has at least two classes.

Just because titles in the European sense were forbidden by the Constitution does not mean that classes did not exist, or that the framers attempted to create a classless society. In a sense, this Constitutional prohibition could be construed as rank hypocrisy. Thomas Jefferson may have been Mister Jefferson, but as a slave-owner he had greater power of life and death over a greater number of people than any European count or duke.

"Thomas Jefferson may have been Mister Jefferson, but as a slave-owner he had greater power of life and death over a greater number of people than any European count or duke."

Your argument is well presented, but the above sentence is a bit of a stretch. European aristocracy had far to much control over far too many people. This included power over life and death. And they were not elected, they gained power because they were born into certain families.

But when you start refering to people by class, you cross the line and become pompous. Part of the American Revolution was to do away with titles of nobility.

Not disagreeing, but what does mention of classes have to do with nobility? Couldn't it just be reference to everyday economic or social classes?

"Not disagreeing, but what does mention of classes have to do with nobility?"

Oh, I don't know.

A:Upper class.Nobility and those who scam their way into elected office.

B:Lower class.The rest of us.

I did forget a part of the upper class. Academics that have never been forced to deal with reality but consider themselves on a higher plane somehow.Bill and Hillary come to mind as do most liberal democrats.

As an ambitious young man in his teens, George Washington copied 110 rules of good manners from an English courtesy book of the previous century.

George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior:

Superfluous compliments and all affectations of ceremony are to be avoided, yet where due, they are not to be neglected.
Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any.
Artificers and persons of low degree ought not to use many ceremonies to Lords or others of high degree, but respect and highly honor them; and those of high degree ought to treat them with affability and courtesy, without arrogance.

This is good advice for us all, even Dr. Horvat. It's more down to earth than this article IMO.

You can find these rules quoted along with a few others in Gary Aldrich's book Unlimited Access.

Oh, I don't know. A:Upper class.Nobility and those who scam their way into elected office. B:Lower class.The rest of us.

I think you're being too broad in your analysis. Where's the "nobility" you speak of? Also, those who "scam their way into elected office" may not necessarily be upper class; what if they start out in the "lower class?" How does scamming one's way into "elected office" make one of the upper class? As for this "lower class" being "the rest of us": I think you're tossing too many folks into one pot; there are distinctions to be made. What is the purpose of this broad distinction you make? To contrast those with power with those without?

can't forget about those guys, lol.

"What is the purpose of this broad distinction you make? To contrast those with power to those without?"

In a word, yes. Why is someone born of a certain familiy deemed superior when ,in most cases, they clearly are not. The Kennedys are a good example. Joe senior made his fortune running bootleg whiskey out of Canada. Now these sewer trout are touted as American royalty.

Another example is the "The Royal Family of Great Britain". They amount to little more than well paid welfare recipients that serve no usefull purpose that I can see. Yet many bow and scrape before them.

To put yourself or anyone else in a certain class robs you ,or them, of individuality. Something the so called upper class and government wonks rely on to hold on to power.

I hope this explains my position.

To put yourself or anyone else in a certain class robs you ,or them, of individuality.

This is a very interesting point. How does placing one's self in a "class" rob one's "individuality?" And why is this necessarly bad? What's so important about "individuality"? Assuming you dislike the classes, what do you propose as an alternative to the current class system? Would you re-engineer the class system? Would you abolish all classes? If classes destroy individuality, then what upholds or promotes it?

I think it is more complex than simply good and bad, rich and rest. The example of the Kennedy's shows how bad some people of the upper class are; but people of other classes are just as worse. You seem to imply from the Kennedy's that all people of the upper class are bad, which is certainly not the case. There are some inequalities which are good -- class distinctions is one of them. I think there will always be different classes; Social and economic classes seem just natural outgrowths of the differences (superficial or not) betweem humans.

Something the so called upper class and government wonks rely on to hold on to power.

Do you have any proof of this?

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