Posted on 07/29/2003 8:40:07 PM PDT by LocalT
More than fifty years have passed since Orwell wrote of “the need to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end …” Tendentious political language, he went on, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” This was written in 1946 at the height of Stalin’s power, and Orwell later developed his thoughts on this issue in his novel 1984. In the book’s appendix on The Principles of Newspeak he wrote that the special function of Oceania’s vocabulary “was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them.” Words could be destroyed, he said, by wantonly expanding their meanings so that they came completely to replace a whole range of older, more specific, and more definite terms and usages. This all sounds painfully familiar. One sees the term ‘civilization’ being deliberately expanded in order to embrace some very uncivilized behavior indeed.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/sum03/sandall.htm
(Excerpt) Read more at newcriterion.com ...
This editorial deserves a read by all who cherish modern civilization. Savage is a nut case seeking to cash in one the popularity of conservative wit on the radio. JMHO. Feel free to flame away.
An excerpt from a great, thought provoking piece. Found way at the end:
As Victor David Hanson points out in the June Commentary, the primeval political arrangements of the House of Saud involve some 7,000 royal cousins living in palaces and luxury estates scattered about from Paris and Geneva to Aspen in the USA. Within this realm, freedom of religion is unknown, while women are veiled, kept out of sight, and subject to sexual apartheid. The UN Committee Against Torture is reportedly asking the Saudis to curtail flogging and amputations, but “so far they have answered that such punishments have been an integral part of Islamic law for ‘1,400 years’ and so ‘cannot be changed.’” The population is soaring. Educational standards are low. In Hanson’s words, “thirty percent of Saudis remain unschooled, and nearly as many are barely literate, their resentment against a coddled elite mitigated only by carefully measured doses of anti-Western Wahhabism and the satisfaction that at least the millions of guest Asian and Arab helots, imported for much of the society’s wage labor, are more unfree than they.”
Not just human capital but almost every technological item needed is shipped in from outside. Since forty percent of the country’s income is spent on arms purchases, the weapons are impressive; but many planes must be flown by mercenaries or stay grounded. Advanced jets and bombers don’t have the pilots to fly them or the mechanics to keep them in the air because Saudi Arabia has too few advanced and modern minds. It is a frustrating situation—perhaps downright maddening to some. And as Hanson says, there may be “a sick genius in a system that can shift the hatreds of an illiterate Saudi youth away from the jet-setting sheiks who have diverted his nation’s treasure and onto the anonymous Americans who created that wealth, who ship the kingdom its consumer goods, and who defend it from the neighborhood’s carnivores.” Fifty years of pragmatism, opportunism, and cynicism have left the US in considerable perplexity, and what it can do about replacing Arab oil with something else is now occupying some of Washington’s best minds.
But one thing is clear. When those planes hit the World Trade Center it wasn’t a “clash of civilizations.” There can no longer be anything honorable in “giving an appearance of solidity to pure wind” as Orwell said, and now is surely the time to call things by their proper names. A number of sick homicidal malcontents is not a civilization. Nor is a conspiracy of religious fanatics. Nor is a savage Arab chieftain like Saddam Hussein. Such men are the tragic byproducts of a backward, chauvinistic, highly aggressive tribal culture—a culture deeply and mortally at odds with the modern world.
The western world needs to develop hydrogen as an alternative to gas to power our automobiles. The sooner the better.
A railing accusation against today's courts which are in the process of proclaiming that 1+1 = 6. Timely confirmation and an excellent essay! Many thanks for the ping, PYW. -- FRegards
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