War of the Words (part 4)

"... it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" Macbeth

To finish up these thoughts, there are some words which have been so misused that they effectively have no denotative value at all. Yes, they are still technically in the dictionary, but in many cases the definition of these words is even officially disputed because they have been used over time as buzz words to condemn enemies. Some of these meaningless words and terms include:

• Extreme: Used to describe anybody who disagrees with me. An awful lot of average Americans with traditional views are constantly finding their views labeled "extreme" by those in the media-government complex. I am in this group, and like most Americans I wonder how my views could *possibly* be thought of as extreme. Traditional family (marriage 1 man 1 woman for life) EXTREME! Follow the constitution as written? EXTREME! Punish actual crime based on actions rather than "thought crime"? EXTREME! Encourage and reward initiative, hard work and knowledge? EXTREME! Believe in the Christian God (as opposed to Islam, atheism, or any other religion)? EXTREME! Actually live by your religious beliefs? EXTREME!! Discourage growth of useless and expensive government programs? EXTREME!
• Free Speech: Enshrined in the constitution of the United States, it is a protection from any interference from Congress of our right to comment, propose ideas, or criticize - especially if our criticism is of the government itself. Now, however 'free speech' refers to things like the right to scream obscenities over a PA system on a college campus, be paid federal dollars to smear yourself with chocolate syrup while naked on a stage with a bullwhip stuck "where the sun don't shine", to call your president (only if a Republican) Hitler, to burn American flags, to have sex with animals and broadcast pictures of yourself where kids can find them, and to praise communist thugs who killed hundreds or even millions. It does not, however, include telling someone about your religion if you are Christian, criticizing a Democratic president, or advocating conservative political or economic philosophies. If you are one of those, expect people to shout you down, threaten you, throw pies and other objects, activate fire alarms, disrupt meetings, try to destroy your business, attack your web page, burn your books and try to pass laws to have the government control all forums where you might be able to speak, all in the name of free speech! Evidently it means "Shut up and let me talk because I'm right and you are wrong." Freedom from morality and any controls for me but not for you. What???
• Right Wing: A synonym for all that is evil in the world. What does it mean? Mostly nothing. "Left" is much easier - I would define it generally as the marxist/communist/socialist wing of thinking - redistribution of wealth, private property being the fount of all evil for them. In the end the left runs the gamut from big government liberals to full-blown totalitarian communist regimes. If this is the definition of left then the definition of right should be easy, right? Free market with small government and nothing but perhaps individual darwinian dog-eat-dog struggle at the far end. But no, we see "right wing" describing everything that is not in my above definition of the term "left". This begs the question of who is using the term "right wing", does it not? Fascism is described as "far right" just about everywhere even though the first fascists sometimes called themselves the extreme 'middle' (see below for discussion of the term fascist, which is also nearly meaningless). The use of *anything* with the word "wing" is used to mark your opponents as "out of the mainstream". Which leads to:
• Mainstream: Used to describe "my position, that everybody agrees with", as opposed to your position, which is "extreme", or "right/left wing". That phrase is a very over-used term by the left in this country also, IMHO. At least this term is obviously a statement of a value judgment, and therefore, if taken correctly, it is not a bad term to use. Just be willing to back up your usage of it! Frankly I think that those in this country who are old-fashioned, religious, hard working, law abiding citizens have a more legitimate claim to the term mainstream than the leftists who advocate throwing away traditional morals and also want to introduce total redistribution of wealth. This is changing, though, but largely due to the blurring of categories by the overuse of this term. It is used primarily to create a public image that tells the more sheep-like people in the country that "nobody is like you" and you had therefore better "get with the program"!
• Fascist: What does this even mean? It has been thrown around so often, I actually don't know any more. I thought that I did at one point. In WWII Germany and Italy were fascist, right? I looked on wikipedia and see a very long historical rundown, but even on that page there is a warning that this was "disputed". The posting was pretty thorough and reasonably clear, and says, among other things, that Fascism is a philosophy evidently comprised of many elements historically, including extreme nationalism (or racialism), authoritarian government by elites including government control of business and labor. It advocated "social interventionism" including many progressive things like eugenics, abortion and euthanasia. A lot of this was described by historical fascists as having 'science' control things instead of old fashioned ideas like religion and tradition. Self-described as the "third position" between capitalism and Bolshevism, it nonetheless is now associated with the label "extreme right wing" even in modern mainstream dictionaries. Anyway, to my mind it sounds like historical fascism shares a lot with communism - hatred of religion, control of the economy by the government (by coercion instead of theft), militarism, and progressive social policies. Question: are the policies of the Obama administration more fascist or marxist? Is it possible to tell? The attempts to control free speech of dissenting voices works for either. The increase of deficit spending on redistributionist government programs sounds more marxist. On the other hand, taking over (but keeping the form of) companies like Chrysler are more like the fascists of old. Fascination with having a scientific elite make decisions for us is maybe more fascist but harder to determine. When we hear it nowadays, it is mostly meaningless because 99% of the time you hear it, fascism is used to imply that those of a conservative bent want to tramp on our free speech or put everyone in jail. Realistically, though - who passes more laws and in the end tramples individual liberty more - small government or large government types? Which is more fascist - encouraging competition between insurance companies or a 2500 page bill to take over all health care, with institutions in place to specifically wipe out private insurance and force people to buy insurance from the government approved companies that survive? Doesn't it sound "fascist" to want to wipe out privately owned radio stations in America through oppressive fees and regulations - because others like them interfered with that "wonderful democratic revolution" in Venezuela (Mark Rich, FCC 'diversity czar')? What about those who want the right to regulate and even shut down the internet? Who require bloggers making $11 a year to pay a $300 business license? Who try to make a little girl get a $200 public food license for a lemonade stand?? I think this is pretty self-evident.
  

I agree that this is the most controversial of my posts of this topic. There is probably legitimate debate to be held on my working definitions of the above terms. That just goes to prove my point, though, about how poorly defined these terms have become in the public parlance. It might even be argued whether the destruction of these terms is due to deliberate effort or just shoddy thinking. I imagine that it is because of both of these, but there are many sources in the left (from Alinsky back through history) that make it clear that this is a deliberate tactic of the left, so we should have no illusions or be lulled into complacency by the assurance that "everybody does it". Yes, they do. There is a vast difference, however, in intent and scope that must be acknowledged. "Spin" or "damage control" and outright propoganda and lying (like Goebbels and 'Bagdad Bob') are far opposite ends of the scale. One is human, the other is outright evil.

Finally, there are certainly many other terms that currently mean nothing. My list is far from complete, but it will suffice. These certainly serve to illustrate that the war of ideas in our culture has become something more fundamental. The tactic of the left especially seems to be the complete redefinition or even destruction of language to win the debate by default. In the end, this is the same thing done by kids with their hands caught in the cookie jar, and amounts to lying. How to fight this? Do we fight back using the same tactics? Try through our own repetition to force the definitions of the words our direction? If your enemy does not fight fair or lies when is it okay to use the same tactics? The alternative is to try to explain things like I have tried to here. The problem is that nobody wants to read this kind of thing or talk about it - it's boring to most people. So, how to deal with it? I would love to hear others' ideas on this point.