Cheap Orwellian Tricks

My last post on Orwell and speech codes really struck a nerve with our leftist friend Ducky. Here’s my favorite comment from him, a piece of rhetoric I call an unsolicited Tu Quoque:

Let's see, we could spends days discussing phrases the right has deployed such as "weapons of mass destruction" or "the liberal media".
The right in general isn't interested in any precise use of language.
Merely say "sharia" and you bark like freaking trained seals.

Sorry, Silverfiddle, but you don't often find the real hard core right capable of moving past a few canned memes.

How about the left’s use of “assault weapon,” “Rabies Radio,” “Faux News," “blood for oil” (only when a Republican is in the White House)…  But I digress. Ducky is engaging in a misdirect Tu Quoque, avoiding the main point and shouting “Waaaah! Conservatives do it too!”  Which responds to nothing, because I never claimed otherwise, but I’m sure Orwell would be impressed with the intellectual depth of Ducky’s rebuttal.

I grant him that many Americans do get into a lather at the mention of Sharia, but it’s warranted.

We have nice looking westernized Imams assuring us that Islam is a religion of peace and Sharia is as innocuous and fluffy as a basket of kittens. Meanwhile, foaming-at-the-mouth Islamists kill infidels on the streets, burn down embassies and behead Jewish reporters, all in the name of Islam.  We've even had a few "honor" killing here in the good ol' US of A.

Perhaps they are abusing the religion and abusing the terms Jihad and Sharia, but actions speak louder than words. I think a reasonable person could excuse other reasonable people the natural tendency to give more weight to loud and violent acts than they do to calmly spoken rhetoric. Actions speak for themselves, words are just easy inventions.

Language (and Image) Abuse:  All sides do it

Ducky complains of the use of certain words as code-speech or quick labels to manipulate the masses or cast shorthand opprobrium on a person or group, and I agree with him. Shorthand is convenient. Imagine having to give a citation-laden dissertation every time you spoke. But it also allows speakers and listeners to lapse into lazy, well-grooved modes of thought, so yes, critical thinking is a must.

And then, as if on cue, Jersey stepped in with this banal piece of propaganda...

When you look at the voter and immigration laws being passed in the South, and the impetus from the Tea Party to make those laws, that if proof of the culture of racism in the Tea Party. When you look at their insanely hyperbolic caricatures of Obama, from the very beginning, that is proof of racism in the Tea Party.

[…] bla bla bla […]

… the drug war is racist, our immigration policies are racist, our foreign policies are racist.

Racism remains a very serious problem in America, and most of it comes from the Right.

That statement took zero thought. Grab the words from the propaganda library and go.  You could build a 99 cent lib-speak iPhone app to come up with that!

"A wathscally wightwing wathist behind evwy twee! And behind evwy government powicy!"

Note the imperious tone and the declaration of finality Jersey uses. A big, wet clot of unsubstantiated twaddle and logical fallacies, wadded up and thrown in our faces as he admonishes us to shut our gobs!

There's no arguing that. That's not "newsspeak" or "codespeak" or a "dog whistle." It is reality.  Anyone who says otherwise deluded, ignorant, or a liar. Period.

“There’s no arguing that!” Got it? Jersey’s style conjures visions of a fat, balding liberal Archie Bunker, pontificating from his ratty recliner wearing a spaghetti-stained wife beater and jabbing his lit cigar at you for emphasis. “There’s no arguing!” “Got that?” “Period!”

Orwell explains this in more detail in his essay Politics and the English Language. I recommend you take a few minutes and read it.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.

I think left, right and middle can all agree on that.

Progressivism vs. Individual Liberty

Progressives do not believe in natural rights as understood by our founders, and they also take a dim view of individual liberty

George Will clarifies...

Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose judicial restraint often expressed his dogmatic majoritarianism, defended “the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law.” He said liberty should not be construed “to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion.”

Holmes' constitution-be-damned judicial philosophy nurtured the fledgling progressivism of the early 20th century, enabling it to grow into the morbidly obese statist monster of the 21st century. His was the opposite of judicial activism. He refused to stand athwart the stampeding statists and shout "stop!" Preferring instead to see individual rights trampled in the name of social hygiene and "progress."

Progressives celebrated Holmes’s gift to government of almost untrammeled police powers. He said courts should defer to economic regulations because the Constitution does not “embody a particular economic theory.”

Princeton’s president, Woodrow Wilson, agreed, dismissing “the inalienable rights of the individual” as “nonsense” inimical to government’s ability to efficiently work its progressive will. So much for the idea that one of the Constitution’s primary purposes is the protection of individual rights against majority tyranny.

See how this encroachment works?  You continue growing government until a citizen cannot turn around without rubbing up against some government project or other.  For the good of greater society, the state must restrict that citizen's action.  They've boxed us in. 

It's the Quacking Marxism, Stupid!

I bring all this up as prelude. I am genuinely thankful for Jersey, Ducky, Jez, Bd, Shaw and other progressives who show up at this blog. Their defense of all that I detest makes us all a little smarter and less sloppy with our arguments. I also believe that our liberal friends genuinely believe they are doing good and bettering the country, attacking the evil rich and fighting against inequality.

Ducky is easier to comprehend once you understand that he is a Marxist. I don't use that term as a pejorative. He himself cops to being a fan of Das Kapital, and I use the term not to associate him with communist regimes, but rather to say he ascribes to Karl Marx's theory of capital, which is inimical to free market capitalism.

Until I realized this, I never knew how to take him. He may not have consciously tried to mask his Marxist beliefs, but they nonetheless remained hidden behind other arguments that never quite rang right, and now I know why. Sources and motives illuminate a debate and bring clarity to it. I am a Dennis Prager fan, and as Dennis says, "Clarity over agreement."

This exchange from last week is telling...

Bastiatarian said...

Jersey and Ducky and Bd, why are you afraid of liberty and people determining themselves what to do with their own property?

Don't be so insecure.

Ducky's here said...

Because "liberty" is a cheap cop-out used by the fringe right to mask their shallowness and irrational support of a kapitalist power structure that is not compatible with democracy.

Because the distribution of wealth under the current system is so inequitable that it will generate social instability and a weakened nation.

Because people who "know what to do with their property" generally only know what temporary itch they want scratched and will go into unsustainable debt to scratch it and ignore the future.

Because it freaking pisses me off that some little right wing snot thinks he has standing to tell me what freedom means to me when there is no reason to believe the right wing slug has ever experienced it.

And that is the crux of the leftist argument, plainly stated by one of the nation's few honest liberals. Progressivism is, at its core, not liberal at all. It is a moralistic crusade on a Quixotic mission to right all wrongs.

I bring this up not to berate Ducky or to make some cheap call for other right-thinkers to attack him (as if any of our attacks could even put the tiniest dent in his impregnable carapace...). No, I congratulate Ducky for plainly stating what he believes and identifying his philosophical sources. If everyone on the left could come clean as Ducky has done, our national debate would gain much clarity.

My response to Ducky

Yes, it's hell allowing those damned, contemptible people to enjoy their liberty and to dispose of their lives and their property as they see fit!

Dammit to hell! How dare we grubby proles presume to chart the course of our own lives while turning a deaf ear to our progressive overlords???!!!

"Distribution of wealth?" That cracks me up.

Who distributes it? Who owns it? Who's entitled to it? How much? How do you divide it? Who decides?

Where is this socialist utopia you dream of, and what would it look like?