Reclaiming the political lexicon

If your arguments are irrational and unconvincing, and the consequences of people listening to them harmful and destructive, then you really need to have some other factor on your side to succeed. Sadly, those who advocate socialism, statism, lilly-livered liberalism and an ever-expanding government have just this. For almost every modern political argument is conducted in a lexicon that favours them, every debate being a competition between those who can use leftist language most convincingly - usually the left, unsurprisingly.

Daniel Hannan covered this phenomenon 18 months ago in The Spectator. It isn't that the language prevents you arguing against the left - it's that it prevents you doing so while still sounding as kind and as decent as your opponent.

The column in question was far more focused on the problem than solutions, though he did note that there was hope for the future. However, the fulfillment of these hopes would require conscious effort to reclaim the political vocabulary. How can we achieve this?

Ayn Rand noted that one effective way to destroy a concept was to dilute its meaning so that the power of what was being described was lost in a mess of all sorts of other concepts and notions. The advantage of this approach is how easily it could be done - it is really no more than a case of using the left's language to describe concepts that extend far beyond leftist ideals. If one can neutralise their advantage and steal the term for one's own argument, fine. If one can associate the term with something especially bad, fine.

Take, for example, the statist use of the word 'community' to refer to groups of people with nought beyond some trivial quality in common.

As a way of subverting individual rights, this is ingenius, because it both allows one to invent a community with rights of its own, and to define that community's interests in terms of its self-appointed representatives.

Discussed on the individual level, racial preferences for college admissions are almost indefensible, with every beneficiary gaining at the expense of someone more qualified, for no better reason than his skin colour. Merit, hard work and achievement are all devalued in the name of racial dogma. But once such issues are discussed at the level of a black community, which has 'historical baggage' and is 'owed a debt', the argument changes completely. People aren't seen any more as individuals with different talents and abilities, but racial proxies, whose fates can and should be determined at the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen in the name of fairness and equality between communities, rather than individuals. Every argument for an advance in group rights - and so a diminution in individual rights - usually follows such reasoning.

Or take the way ideas the left opposes are gradually being turned from legitimate political beliefs into phobias. It is as if they really think people can only disagree with them because they are mentally ill. If you oppose joining a federal European superstate, you are a europhobe or a xenophobe. If you disagree with the aims of the gay lobby, you are a homophobe. If you don't believe that in every case "Islam means peace" you are an Islamophobe, and so on. So before the debate has even started, one then is faced with the challenge of avoiding these labels. "I'm not an Islamophobe, but I do think Islamic governments are seriously deficient in their respect for basic rights and democracy." This is not a very effective response, because it means acknowledging right away that your own view is edging towards a psychological condition - but you are just managing to avoid falling off the edge. Yet again, the left can trump good sense simply with unsophisticated vocabulary.

So how can these terms be diluted to lose such meanings? Simply by constant repetition in other contexts and association with other things. You can write about a 'paedophile community' or a 'mugging community'. You can describe terrorism as a 'lifestyle choice'. A whole range of new phobias can be agreed on to describe everything from support for equality of outcome to opposition to tax cuts. Instead of allowing 'choice' to remain a euphemism for abortion, we should describe ourselves as pro-choice on every issue that the left prefers a state-mandated option, whether the debate is on educational vouchers or gun ownership.

If bloggers, those who read and post on blogs and those who debate on news and politics forums, use this language every time such issues arise, at first it will all seem like a silly and perhaps offensive private joke. But if enough people do it, it will before long become second nature, and it could slowly be relied on to enter the political lexicon every bit as much as 'Fisking' and 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' have already. The use of 'community' to disguise a removal of individual rights, or the monopoly the left claims for its support for choice, would slowly lose their effect. And if every political position is sneeringly described as a phobia, then soon such language will have no effect in making the freedom-lover appear crazy.

What we really need is an agreed glossary of words and terms to introduce into internet debates and everyday blogging. Let's all give some thought to the best language to use to dilute the left's vocabulary of emotional blackmail and Stalinist psychoanalysis. Anti-statists of the world unite, we have nothing to lose by giving it a shot, but we have a political lexicon to win.

This is precisely why I call abortionists 'serial killers' and refer to 'a woman's right to choose a serial killer'. Also, it is why those against abortion on demand ought refer to the preborn at any age in their lifetime already begun as what they truly are, alive, individual human beings. When confronted with the glaring parallel of Roe v Wade and slavery supported by the Dred scott decision years ago, the left howled that there was no similarity, when it is patently obvious there is thus the howl of denial from the 'lie'berals.

3 posted on 04/17/2003 9:41:32 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote Life Support for others.)

4 posted on 04/17/2003 9:42:43 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote Life Support for others.)

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