Are Words the Problem?

"Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve."

      - Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Irish essayist

Thomas Sowell has penned an interesting column over at TownHall.com about how many of the words we use today often fail to accurately portray the reality of what we're describing. What prompted his op-ed was an angry reader's response to something he had written:

"A recent angry e-mail from a reader said that certain issues should not be determined by 'the dictates of the market.' With a mere turn of a phrase, he had turned reality upside down.

Decisions by people free to make their mutual accomodations with other free people were called 'dictates' while having third parties tell all of them what they could and couldn't do was not."

Sowell accuses the political left of playing with the language to paint pictures that are deceptive and misleading. He claims the left has changed the basic meaning of many words and substituted other words in order to debate issues in terms of a new vocabulary rather than on the real substance of those issues:

"The word 'swamp,' for example, has been all but erased from the language. Swamps were messy, sometimes smelly, places where mosquitoes bred and sometimes snakes lurked. The left has replaced the word 'swamp' with 'wetlands,' a word spoken in pious tones reserved for sacred things."

The reason for this, says Sowell, is to "impose the left's notions of how other people can use their own land." He continues his argument with a discussion of the word "bum":

"Another word that the left has virtually banished from the language is 'bum.' Centuries of experiencewith idlers who refused to work and who hung around on the streets making a nuisance--and sometimes a menace--of themselves were erased from our memories as the left verbally transformed those same people into a sacred icon, 'the homeless.' "

Just like swamps, he says, what was once inhospitable and disease-producing has been turned into something we have an obligation to protect. It is "now our duty to support people who refused to support themselves."

Sowell has no kind words for those who depict people who don't pull their own weight or exercise personal responsibility as individuals who have been denied "access," or deprived of "opportunity," "rights" or "social justice."

"The word games of the left--from the mantra of 'diversity' to the pieties of 'compassion'--are not just games. They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric.

'Rights,' for example, have become an all-purpose term used for evading both facts and logic by saying that people have a 'right' to whatever the left wants to give them by taking from others."

He closes with a few critical remarks about how we're currently educating our children and expresses regret that we once taught our kids "how to think," but now teach them "what to think."

While I agree with Mr. Sowell's observations about how the words we use to describe things today are changing, it's not just the left that attempts to promote its views with its rhetorical shenanigans, but the right as well. This country has more than its fair share of people on both sides of the aisle who want everyone to see and do things their way and can't understand or appreciate anyone who doesn't agree with them.

I don't have any problem with opposing views. In fact, I enjoy them, and love having a healthy face-to-face exchange of ideas with someone who doesn't see things as I see them. What I do not welcome, however, is having someone who is determined to impose his opinion on me whether I agree with him or not. That, I am afraid, is what is now dividing America. Many on both the left and the right believe they have the answer for all and are willing to do almost anything to ensure that their point of view becomes the law of the land. 

That's not what America is about. America is about diversity and difference. I think we should celebrate that, not try to create a society where we're trying to change every person into someone who looks, acts and thinks exactly like we do. With all due respect, Mr. Sowell, calling a "swamp" a "wet-land," or referring to a "bum" as "the homeless" is the least of my worries. We've got to bridge the divide that is tearing our great nation apart by applauding, not condemning, the diverse views that have always existed among us.