Wednesday, March 23, 2005

It's tough to keep your eye on the ball, sometimes...

The saying, "He who controls the language, controls the debate" has been variously attributed to Stalin, Goebbels or someone similar. The point is that when you control the debate, your opponent has a very difficult time getting his arguments heard or taken seriously. This has been a favorite tool of Socialists since the time of Marx & Engels. Arguably, the most effective way to grab control of a debate is to co-opt the language of your opponents. To use their terminology while substituting your own definitions for their terms is a devastatingly effective technique because of the confusion it sows among those whom you are trying to influence.

What the collectivist left in the country has done with this tool is nothing short of brilliant. First they appropriated the term liberal, which until about 1930 meant someone who believed in as little government as possible. Then the homosexuals appropriated the term "Gay" which used to mean simply, "happy". Recently co-opted terms include "activist judges" and "culture of death". This co-opting must be resisted by all means. First, it has to be brought to the public's attention.

The first of my recent examples was a clear description of jurists who, finding no basis for their personally desired outcomes in the law, simply created new rights nowhere enumerated in the constitution. Now, however, any jurist who wants to return to the traditional understanding of the role of the judiciary is branded a "right wing activist judge". With the assistance of the media, people like Senator Charles Schumer actually have people believing that someone like Antonin Scalia is an activist judge! You've got to admire the brilliance of this.

Lastly and for me, most importantly, "The Culture of Death" is the attitude that says foetuses - even at nine months - are not human and don't deserve any legal protections against the termination of their lives for any reason. It is an attitude that says that the legal right of a husband to put his wife to death when she is not on life support, outweighs the right of his disabled wife to life. It is that attitude which says it is OK for doctors to actively assist in the suicides of patients...and in the Netherlands, even terminate the lives of people who have made no statement that they want this. It seeks a hierarchy of life - in which some are worth more than others. Because a sixty year old may possibly benefit some day from a therapy derived from harvested fetal stem cells, it is, therefore, acceptable to terminate unborn humans. THIS is the culture of death.

Here in America, in A.D. 2005, however, "the culture of death" is now a term applied to people who wish to preserve their own lives via the Constitutionally guaranteed right to self-defense - because they oppose "gun control". This particular mis-appropriation is a very new one. We, who recognize that the founding fathers put the right to bear arms into the constitution for a very good reason, must not let this stand. We cannot let our opponents control the debate as they have for so long. "the culture of death" musn't lose its true meaning.

Ours once was a culture of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Those who steal our words and use them against us would destroy life and liberty in their personal pursuit of that which - in their arrogance - they have decided is the best definition of happiness - for all of us.

God Save the Republic.

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