Why Every Catholic Is a Traditional Catholic (Or Should Be)
’Tis a pity when a word dies. It is conceived in the womb of a certain culture, and it gestates in that culture until its meaning is set as firmly as the facets of a diamond. Words then become the privileged communication of truth to other men. If reckless men begin assigning different meanings to words, different from the meanings that they have borne over time immemorial, human communication comes to a halt. One man will mean one thing, still another man something completely different. Manipulating words weakens a culture, casts it into a spiral of disequilibrium. Chaos results.
Since totalitarians depend upon chaos, the manipulation of words is a paramount strategy. No thinker has analyzed this “death of words” with greater trenchancy than George Orwell. In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” he brilliantly demonstrates how vague, euphemistic, and simplified language narrows the range of human imagination and enables authoritarian power. Political language is designed to hide rather than express the truth. He believed that bad language can stem from poor thinking, but sloppy and dishonest language can corrupt thought.
Witness the Old Totalitarians in their recasting of words, draining them of their once exalted meanings: for instance, “the people’s republic” and “liberation army.” Words employed for generations, familiar and comforting words, which endeared and attracted, become infused with malignant new meanings meant to smother truth and deliver men into bondage.
Similar tactics are being borrowed today by the New Left. Formerly noble words such as diversity, inclusion, equity, compassion, and, dare we say it, love, have been taken hostage to serve as nooses around the necks of our culture. This whole project is designed to turn the minds of men inside out. Once accomplished, reality is altered just as the Overlords wish.
Continue reading at CRISIS Magazine here.