{"id":1768,"date":"2016-10-13T08:40:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2016-10-13T08:45:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T12:45:17","slug":"1768","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1768","title":{"rendered":"Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"abuse-of-language\"<\/a>The great Thomist Josef Pieper<\/strong>\u00a0penned a short book in the late seventies on how totalitarian regimes use words to gain control over the masses:\u00a0Abuse of Language<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 Abuse of Power<\/em>. Pieper\u2019s treatise came to mind as I read that the Canadian government is no longer going to refer to ISIS as ISIS (that is, the \u2018Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or sometimes just the \u201cIslamic State\u201d). Rather, they will use the more neutral term \u201cDaesh,\u201d so as to avoid, they say, painting all of Islam with the bloodstained brush of terrorism. Ironically, not only does this name (which is in fact an Arabic acronym) mean more or less the same thing as ISIS, but the terrorists of ISIS\u00a0have threatened to cut the tongue out of anyone using it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course, this opens up many questions, not least the relation between Islam and terrorism. Taken to its logical conclusion, this change in nomenclature would mean that no terrorist act can, by definition, be termed \u201cIslamic,\u201d even if the terrorist confesses it so with his dying breath. Whence, therefore,\u00a0Allahu Akbar<\/em>? Is any and all bloodshed in the name of Allah no longer Islamic? Who is to say? What therefore do we make of Islamic \u201cradicalization,\u201d which literally means \u201cgoing back to the root\u201d? Do we not mean by this returning to the very origins of Islam that, even to the most irenic of historians, is steeped in blood and carnage? Can a change in name change this reality?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, no, but it can change our\u00a0perception<\/em>\u00a0of reality, the \u201creality\u201d of our thoughts, ideas, and opinions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is by no means the first time a regime has used Orwellian language to mollify evil: Hitler had his\u00a0lebensraum<\/em>, carving out a little bit of \u201cliving room\u201d for \u201creal\u201d Germans in central Europe. No worries, just a little blue-eyed Aryan expansion. Oh, and we also have to \u201ccleanse\u201d the race of \u201cimpurities,\u201d culminating in the \u201cfinal solution.\u201d Little written record was kept of Hitler\u2019s decisions; it was all dark and secret, for light exposes the truth. The \u201clabour camps,\u201d wherein one was worked to death, or transported to the gas chambers, had the infamous sign in wrought-iron over the gate,\u00a0Arbeit macht frei<\/em>, \u201cwork will make you free,\u201d a demonic parody of Our Lord\u2019s words that, rather, it is the truth which shall truly set you free.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Few could outdo the Communists in their use of doublespeak: \u201cFive-year plans,\u201d \u201cfree the worker,\u201d the \u201cPeople\u2019s Party,\u201d \u201cequality for all,\u201d \u201cenemies of the State,\u201d and, proclaiming all the lies in official form was their official paper\u00a0Pravda<\/em>, which did anything but speak the \u201cTruth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beware of Soft Totalitarianism<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The so-called \u201chard\u201d totalitarian regimes are on the wane, but beware the soft variety, which is creeping into our very brains and thoughts, as our government, schools and their mouthpieces in the media, subtly alter the meaning of our language and its terms. Ponder the following:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Gay<\/em>, which until quite recently meant \u201chappy\u201d or \u201cjoyful,\u201d now applies to a group that engage in unnatural vices that will make them anything\u00a0but<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>happy and joyful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The same goes for\u00a0queer<\/em>, which once meant \u201codd\u201d or \u201cout of the ordinary.\u201d Now, it is a term of \u201cpride,\u201d which, along with gay, now forms \u201cGay Pride.\u201d Are they proud for being happy? If memory serves, I recall a local brewer years ago marketed a beer that they called Pride Lager, bedecked with a pink triangle as its label, targeted to the homosexual community. It did not fare well. As you can guess, no one wanted to be seen with one in his hand, at least outside a \u201chappy\u201d bar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From gay, to\u00a0gender<\/em>, a term once upon a time applied only to inanimate objects, while the term\u00a0sex<\/em>\u00a0was used for people, as in \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale.\u201d Now we are taught a fluid notion of sex or, pardon me,\u00a0gender<\/em>, and even our traditional terms are fraught with discriminatory overtones. We are no longer male, nor female, but rather somewhere on the spectrum of who-knows-how-many (some say infinite<\/a>) possible \u201cgenders.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hence, the expectation to no longer use the all-encompassing, and inclusive, \u201che\u201d or \u201chis,\u201d but the awkward and clumsy \u201che\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>she,\u201d \u201cshe or he,\u201d or, alas, \u201cs\/he,\u201d to say nothing of all the bizarre neologistic pronouns carved out of the thin air of political correctness,\u00a0zhe, zir, shi<\/em>\u00a0and so on, soon to be prescribed in law. A\u00a0column this morning<\/a>in the\u00a0National Post<\/em>\u00a0cautions against state interference in this gender war, but declaims from its media-moral throne that we should in all fairness use whatever pronouns people want us to use.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But do not pronouns mean something, and point, or not point, to an underlying reality? Why would I want to be complicit in someone else\u2019s disordered \u201cgender fluidity\u201d or, as they now say, \u201cdysphoria\u201d?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I wonder how long it will be before Hamlet\u2019s monologue, and much else in literature, is bowdlerized:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What a piece of work is man!\u2026 And, of course, woman, or, er, is that womyn? Humyn, anyone?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the midst of\u00a0an address to seminarians<\/a>\u00a0on his recent pilgrimage to Georgia, Pope Francis warned that there is a great enemy to marriage today: the theory of\u00a0gender. Today there is a world war to destroy marriage. Today there are ideological colonizations that destroy, not with weapons, but with ideas. Therefore, there is a need to defend ourselves from this threat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Illiberal Liberal Prime Minister of Canada<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Trudeau<\/a>Of course, if one were so to \u201cdefend oneself,\u201d he (and, yes, she) would be accused of bigotry, hatred, and being anti-freedom. Speaking of which, here in Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau and his cronies govern under the mantle of\u00a0Liberal<\/em>, derived from the Latin verb\u00a0liberare<\/em>, to free, or set something free. Even heterodox Catholics have adopted this term: They are \u201cliberal,\u201d while we benighted knuckle-draggers are \u201cconservatives\u201d or \u201ctraditionalist\u201d (or something worse). As truth would have it, such \u201cliberals\u201d are anything\u00a0but<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>for true freedom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Case in point: Trudeau and parliament recently legalized euthanasia, which, as its Greek etymology attests, literally means a \u201cgood death,\u201d\u00a0eu-thanatos<\/em>. Who does not want a good death, surrounded by a priest and family, having received the Last Rites, breathing one\u2019s soul into eternity, and carried to heaven by the Angelic Host. But that is not quite what they mean, as some healthcare worker injects a semi-compliant patient-victim with a syringe full of potassium chloride in the dead of night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trudeau has also made clear that his government will always and everywhere defend a woman\u2019s \u201cright to choose,\u201d which, translated, means the right to have her unborn child killed. This issue seems \u201csettled\u201d in Canada, at least so far, but not so in Poland, already with one of the strictest abortion laws, but which the other day voted against a bill to outright ban the grisly procedure. The legislators were swayed by a host of protesting women, presumably educated into ignorance, out marching for their \u201cright\u201d to choose what is good for their own bodies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, what of\u00a0pro-choice<\/em>? Why does that term bring to mind being pro-abortion<\/em>? Are we not\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0pro-choice, in any real sense of that term? Saint Augustine\u2019s phrase for \u201cfree will\u201d was\u00a0liberum arbitrium<\/em>, which translates more precisely as \u201cfree choice.\u201d After all, as Augustine rightly reasoned, we cannot\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0will our final end, which is God whom we all desire by nature. Rather, all we can\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0choose are the\u00a0means<\/em>\u00a0to this end, whether well or badly. So everyone, not least Catholics who have the fullness of truth, is \u201cpro-choice.\u201d It\u2019s just that some choices are evil, and lead us away from our final end, and from the common good of society.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pope Saint John Paul II in\u00a0Evangelium Vitae<\/em>\u00a0puts the point even more forcefully in speaking of the \u2018unspeakable\u2019 crimes of abortion and infanticide, and I cannot put the case more eloquently and clearly than he:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But today, in many people\u2019s consciences, the perception of its gravity has become progressively obscured. The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior and even in law itself, is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake. Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception. In this regard the reproach of the Prophet is extremely straightforward: \u201cWoe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness\u201d (Is 5:20). Especially in the case of abortion there is a widespread use of ambiguous terminology, such as \u201cinterruption of pregnancy,\u201d which tends to hide abortion\u2019s true nature and to attenuate its seriousness in public opinion. Perhaps this linguistic phenomenon is itself a symptom of an uneasiness of conscience. But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time to Take Back the Language<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong>By so altering the terms of our language, the powers of darkness have proved themselves wiser than the children of light. By co-opting the common and customary meaning of our words, with shrewd epistemology, they have altered our thoughts and concepts, which connect us with how things really are, or are not, which in turn is how Saint Thomas defined truth,\u00a0adequatio rei et intellectus<\/em>: a conformity between the mind and reality, a relationship that is forged, built up and maintained by what we mean by the words we use. Josef Pieper argues that it is in changing our use of language that totalitarian regimes change our notion of truth. We are enslaved not with guns and tanks, but by the ignorance resulting from the warping of our words and thoughts. We, and by that I mean especially our young people attending modern state-controlled educational establishments, are being turned into a nation of mind-controlled zombies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who of them connects \u201chappy\u201d anymore with \u201cgay\u201d? Perhaps they think of \u201cgays\u201d as joyful, happy people, surrounded by hateful bigots wanting to take away the source of their, er, joy? That is often how they are portrayed in films and sit-coms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And who considers abortion \u201cmurder\u201d anymore, except a few fringe \u201canti-choicers\u201d? Even bringing the topic up in any discourse is considered bad taste. We will soon see the same thing with euthanasia, made even more palatable with the antiseptic phrase \u201cmedical assistance in dying.\u201d Helping someone to die used to be \u201caccessory to murder,\u201d a federal crime, but no more, so long as the person has, and here we go again, \u201cterminal,\u201d or now the subjectively even more ambiguous \u201cunbearable\u201d suffering.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are in strange waters here. As our minds get muddied and fogged up, we must breathe in the pure and clear air of truth in how we use our words, which shape our thoughts, which in turn influence our actions, for good or for ill.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is some advice: A good place to start in forming our minds is a decent primer on Aristotelian logic, then move on to some scholastic \"saint<\/a>philosophy and theology, the two primary hallmarks of which were\u00a0clarity<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0precision<\/em>: To say what you mean clearly, and cut away what you do not mean. And amongst the greatest of the Church\u2019s minds in training us how to think is Thomas Aquinas, held up by the Church as the paradigm of theological method, of the synthesis between faith and reason, and a source of much of the established terminology of the Church (and our culture).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Paul II went so far as to praise Thomas in his 1998 encyclical\u00a0Fides et Ratio<\/em>\u00a0\u201cas an authentic model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The American author Flannery O\u2019Connor supposedly read a page of the\u00a0Summa<\/em>\u00a0every night, a practice that bears much imitation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After that, read good books, essays, articles, encyclicals. Look words up, find out their etymologies and meanings, and use them correctly, even if,\u00a0especially if<\/em>, it is politically \u201cincorrect\u201d to do so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take back the language, so that our thoughts and our reasoning may be as clear, pure and, yes, as courageous in the truth as Christ asks of us, so that our \u201cyes, may mean yes, and our no, no.\u201d Anything more, comes from, well, you know\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great Thomist Josef Pieper\u00a0penned a short book in the late seventies on how totalitarian regimes use words to gain control over the masses:\u00a0Abuse of Language\u00a0\u2013 Abuse of Power. Pieper\u2019s treatise came to mind as I read that the Canadian government is no longer going to refer to ISIS as ISIS (that is, the \u2018Islamic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,9,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1768"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1774,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions\/1774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}