Politics and the English Language

Friend Xerxes in his latest column argues, quoting another writer, that “violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.”

This is wrong, in a variety of ways. This condones violence.

If it were true, we would expect the survivors of the Nazi death camps, once released, to have been particularly violent. In fact, we found the opposite: they were notably unlikely to be arrested for any violent crimes. We would expect the depressed to be particularly violent. In fact, they are much less likely to commit violence than the general population. We would obviously never punish a child for misbehaviour: it would make them more violent. And prisons would make crime worse. 

Yet this is apparently the common opinion on the left. This is why they imagine that defunding the police would reduce crime.

The ancient and universal wisdom is that suffering teaches us not to inflict suffering on others. It teaches empathy. In the words of the I Ching, “through suffering we learn to lessen rancor.” This is indeed the reason suffering exists; why a good God would create a world in which suffering is possible.

So, too, coddling or spoiling a child creates a bully.

The claim that violence comes from suffering is well calculated to increase the general level of violence and suffering. It justifies violence, rewards violence, and encourages us to shun the suffering. They are, after all, violent—so we tell ourselves.

Xerxes then points out that “Violence is not limited to inflicting physical harm.”

It is, in fact, physical harm by definition.

Violence (Merriam-Webster): “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy.”

(American Heritage): “Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury: the violence of the rioters.”

This leads us in very dark directions: to justifying violence in response to speech. To the end of all civil discourse, or democracy, or human rights.

But even more disturbing, when I point out to Xerxes the dictionary definition, his response is “You shouldn’t let yourself be straitjacketed by dictionary definitions.” And he simply reiterates that “verbal abuse is a form of violence, directed against another. … As is emotional blackmail: ‘If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to leave you.’ Shutting down social security networks, so that people starve, is a form of violence.”

This makes a fairly explicit claim to a right to use violence against your political opponents: against those who would “shut down social security networks.”

I also find it sinister that his example of emotional blackmail is “If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to leave you.” This is actually seen from the point of view of the abuser. The abused inevitably wants to get away; the abuser wants the victim to stay. And the abuser will accuse the abused of abuse. Perhaps this says everything.

But neither of these considerations are as central as Xerxes’s, and the left’s, claimed right to overrule the dictionary and take command of language itself. Both language and all human society collapses at the point people demand the right to change the meaning of words: if any word can mean anything, no word means anything. And this is just what the left is doing now, systematically. 

Aside from “violence,” consider how they have subverted the English pronouns; the word “phobia”; “genocide”; “exceptional”; “indigenous”; “aboriginal”; “woke”; “progressive”; “liberal”; “Fascist”; “Nazi”; “racism”; the list grows daily.

George Orwell pointed out that the most pernicious and dangerous form of totalitarianism is an attempt to control the language itself. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.