Twisting words

By Grace Vuoto*

January 2012 – Similar to communist revolutionaries in Eastern Europe throughout much of the 20th century, contemporary American liberals have discovered that the best way to alter behavior is to penetrate the mind by transforming our vocabulary.

There are five words in particular that have been hijacked and which form the basis of the liberal philosophy. The first of these is judgment. To judge is considered the cardinal liberal sin: “Who are you to judge?” is the most often repeated question when a liberal assaults traditional morality. All the while, the very question is a form of judgment. Yet, every individual makes judgments incessantly, [such as] what to wear or eat. Judging is an inevitable function of the brain whether one is liberal or conservative.

What liberals are really doing is conflating judgment with condemnation. The debate is not whether we should judge or condemn – as we all inevitably do – but ultimately what behaviors are or are not acceptable.

The next most misused word is toleration. Liberals believe that toleration is a right: All behaviors ought to be tolerated and to contest this is to be … intolerant. In this instance, the liberal is conflating tolerance with acceptance. To tolerate behavior is to allow it to take place. In a free society such as the one we live in, few behaviors, with the exception of criminal acts, are not permitted. Hence, conservatives ought to proudly claim that we tolerate but do not accept liberal behavior, in the same manner as liberals tolerate but do not accept the conservative lifestyle.

[Next] the liberal will often lash out with the compassion card. This word too has been hijacked. Liberals equate compassion with either acceptance of all behaviors or with government largesse. To oppose any of these is to “lack compassion.” Yet compassion means simply to have regard for others. Conservatives believe that true compassion means leading individuals toward God and self-sufficiency. 

Liberals have done a masterful job of also distorting the word freedom. In countless movies and commercials, freedom is presented as part of a lifestyle that includes sex, drugs and bucking social conventions. For centuries, this was not defined as freedom but as bohemianism or libertinism.

In essence, to be truly free is to have self-command and be in harmony with the will of God; to be truly free means to have autonomy from state interference. Enslaved to the flesh, enslaved to the state, that is the liberal definition of freedom: Conservatives must cry out: “Freedom is ours; slavery is yours.”

Finally, one of the key words liberals have gleefully appropriated is progressive. Liberal values are cast as forward-looking, leading to a better, brighter future. And conservative values are tainted as leading Americans toward a dark, superstitious, bigoted and medieval past. In reality, progressivism is a philosophy that has already been tried and rejected numerous times: In the declining years of the Roman Empire, sexual permissiveness was rejected in favor of the intellectual and spiritual brilliance of Christianity; and in the 20th century the promise of a social utopia based on government redistribution of wealth – communism – also collapsed. 

Once we recognize that the liberal revolution always begins with words, we are armed to counter it. Hence, notice that killing babies in the womb is called choice; redistributing wealth is called equality; … debauchery is sanitized as addiction or sanctioned as partying; propaganda or indoctrination is called sensitivity training; thought and speech control is called political correctness,

Thus, it is time conservatives regain control of the English language and speak as follows: “I wholeheartedly condemn your degenerate lifestyle; I tolerate but do not accept your sinful behavior; my compassion is greater than yours; I stand for freedom and you for enslavement. To make progress is to reject the debauchery of the ancient world and the crimes of communism.”

This is the kind of self-confidence we need in order to prevent liberalism from infecting the culture. We must first get liberals out of our words, out of our mouths and out of the sinews of our brain before we can truly defeat this destructive ideology.  undefined

*Dr. Grace Vuoto is executive director of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal (www.edmund
burkeinstitute.org). This feature has been edited for length with Dr. Vuoto’s permission.