The Lingo of the Left
Remnick’s entire vessel, from propeller to mermaid, is a tissue of omissions, exaggerations, and misrepresentations, with scarcely a single unoffending paragraph to be found. Everything has been transformed — history, morality, the major personages, the nature of the “occupation,” international law, and the underlying politics of the region. It is only fair to say that Remnick writes well; it is also fair to say that Remnick writes trash. He is a master of the lingo of the left and his screed provides a cardinal illustration of how the left operates.
A clear and honest paradigm of representation is alien to the left’s semantic relation to the world. In The Political Unconscious, Duke University professor and prolific author Fredric Jameson, an unrepentant leftist, exhorts his readers to “liberate [themselves] from the empirical object” — just “liquidate the experiences in question and dissolve them without a trace.” In other words, make the real world disappear, put a simulacrum in its place, and life will somehow improve. Writing and thinking are understood as resistance to the common assumptions of unenlightened mankind and its supposedly warped view of the world. Writing is “writing over.” Thinking is pretending, or even believing, things are otherwise.
In this respect, a manual of actual events, like the 8th century Annals of Saint Gall, would be rejected out of hand since it cannot be ideologized, but remains trunklined to reality. Here is a sample passage:
709: Hard winter. Duke of Gottfried died.
710: Hard year and deficient in crops
….
712: Flood everywhere.
…
714: Pippin, Mayor of the Palace, died.
…
716: Charles devastated the Saxons with great destruction.
…
721: Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
…
731: Blessed Bede, the presbyter, died.
732: Charles fought against the Saracens at Poitier on Saturday.
This document does not seek to transform or hide events but to record them. Reductive as it is, it furnishes a model for the proper use of words and a source text for the conscientious and dependable writing of history in its initial phases. Its use of words is deictic, that is, words point directly to the referent without trying to change it into something else, to create an idealistic and partisan version of “what happens,” or to construct by verbal fiat a surrogate and presumably better world than the one we live in. Naturally, the professional historian will attempt to perceive the interconnection of events within a larger context in order to establish a sense of continuity and direction, but this does not confer a license to concoct or reconfigure the world in accordance with a prior ideological conviction.
For leftists, however, scrupulous and candid observation of things as they are is contra-indicated and the words they favor are, essentially, intended to deflect or suppress, not illuminate or reveal. Living in an illusory world, the left can maintain its privileged fiction only by adulterating language, treating it as an instrument that glosses what is as what isn’t, and codifies what isn’t as what is. Words are like smushables, stuffed at the top of a bag, but never unpacked to disclose what lies beneath.
German philosopher Uwe Poerksen calls such words, in his book of that title, “plastic words,” which, appearing in political speeches, government documents, academic seminars, and the media, “blur meaning and disable common language.” Thus they become “the building blocks for plans and solutions that may seem utopian but that end up impoverishing the world.” They represent, in effect, “the tyranny of modular language” which serves as an “instrument of subjugation” rather than a “tool of freedom.” Words employed this way, he says, wander like the bridge supports in Paul Klee’s 1937 painting, The Revolution of the Viaduct. The verbal bridge from mind to world has been rendered uncrossable.
One recalls Jane Austen writing in Northanger Abbey that her readers will see in “the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity.” Nothing wrong with that. The trouble is that the real world is not a novel and leftist authors, who treat it as if it were exactly that, ensure only that we are all hastening together to perfect misery. This is only another way of saying that the left does not live in real time but in theoretical time or imaginary time. It has lost what Christopher Lasch calls “the connecting thread” to the real world and to genuine history, leading to our inevitable discomfiture. “Nature,” Lasch writes in The True and Only Heaven, “overrides our designs and imposes a heavy tax on every attempt to surmount or circumvent it.”
In the final analysis, the leftist use of words arises from the need to achieve a position of mastery or domination. But it is subject to a destructive irony, for the world it wishes to control, erected on deception and irreality, as well as on overweening arrogance, inevitably collapses like the Tower of Babel and concludes only in the loss of hope and the decay of culture. A world built on desire at the expense of fact relies on words severed from their proper function of clarification as opposed to dissimulation. They constitute a form of what Orwell in Politics and the English Language called “modern writing at its worst,” which consists not “in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer,” but “in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order…and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”
We are all diminished by the betrayal of language, which infects the entire field of discourse as it progressively becomes a standard medium of exchange. The essential gradients of Leftspeak — omitting, exaggerating, misrepresenting, transforming, concealing — in an age of ubiquitous and instantaneous media dissemination, render us both vulnerable to our adversaries and morally and intellectually debased. For as Isaiah Berlin reminds us in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, “the degradation of language is always the surest sign of the degradation of a people.”
Lots of really cool words here. My favorite is the word, humbug. Their relentless repetition of tedious lies is just that: humbuggery. No matter how often I deconstruct someone’s Leftist trope, the next guy comes along with the same trope. I spend much time explaining reality to folks. Some can be silenced. Sometimes the words actually get through, but it becomes tedious. I persist, because I refuse to surrender to their humbuggery.
I have read the article and many of the comments and am dismayed to see the conflating of Marxists and anticommunist social democrats. Also, the lack of history. I tried to create a glossary of “left” positions here to correct this mish-mash: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/16/perceptions-of-the-enemy-the-left-looks-at-the-right-and-vice-versa/. If you don’t get your history of social movements correct, all the rest is confusing. It is a different subject that interests me: why do children of successful parents go the left-liberal route. Embedded antisemitism and the desire to assimilate explains a lot.
Gee Clare, I don’t see the left debating about the variations of conservatism and trying to normalize the conflations.
They’re too busy assembling their armed gangs, breaking laws, shouting down their opponents, cramming their 20% majority solutions down our throats and calling everybody who disagrees with them stupid, racist, or stupid racists.
But I see your point. If we just get the names of their thuggish intellectual rationales straight, they will probably see the wisdom of our ways and abandon their war on freedom.
Well said!
Two comments complain about my essay as a waste of time. If the essay was actually read, it was not understood. Moderate conservatives (now called left-liberals) have a different argument (or “lingo”) than the revolutionary socialists whom they oppose and even purge. I am not either one of these.
They are both anticapitalists, however, and their hatred of the money power may be shared not only by themselves but by some factions of the Right. And trust me, they are not ignorant of the Right and its internecine combat, but deploy this knowledge to manipulate public opinion.
Clare, it was probably unkind to make a point by teasing yours. My objection had little to do with your good work.
The thing that’s eating me the last few weeks is that I’m sensing a potentially disastrous squishiness, certainly from the rino’s and unsettlingly from more principled conservatives.
It started with the laughable capitulation by Boner, continued with what seems to me to be a horrible strategec error by publishing Ryan’s budget, and continuing up to now with the all hands on deck assault on Donald Trump.
Boner’s capitulation was pitiful, and a massive strategic blunder; but Ryan’s budget is worse. It’s not wrong, it’s the WRONG TIME. Little Lenin has just added ONE TRILLION DOLLARS to the budget, and the opposition chooses to attack Medicare? It’s INSANE. Why on earth isn’t reversing the budget to 2007 levels and defeating obamacare the primary focus of every opposition voice from now until Nov 2012? We just handed them the daggar to stick in our side. Unbelievable. and so so unnecessary when we could have clubbed them for 19 months with the low hanging fruit of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS IN WASTEFUL SPENDING. Now, of course, they have the opening they lusted for to ask how grandma will enjoy her dog food.
And if that isn’t bad enough, now every conservative has spent three weeks trashing the only guy in the country with the guts to stand up to the menace in the white house. But oh no, we are too “pure” to stand for a person willing to take on the press, the white house, the marxists, the world. He only “says” he is conservative. Look at the flip-flops. Look at the protectionism. Well thank GOODNESS none of our favorite pure-bloods have ever been guilty of anythng like that; the purity of OUR gene pool is perfection itself. Gotta squash a mutation like Trump before he starts making the press start being mean to conservatives or something, or even worse, catch the attention of voters we really don’t want in the Republican party.
Bottom line for me is that I believe either little lenin is defeated or it’s game over. I don’t even think we should be talking that much about policy below the level of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS and SEVENTEEN PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT. We need people who will go for the menace’s throat 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
So that’s the real point of my post. I’m not interested in a discussion whether he and his capos are tuberculosis or typhoid. He’s a killer, period, and we need leaders who will go after him. NOW.
Proreason ..right on the money.
the conservatives riding a wave of humping RINOs will give the marxist obama 4 more
“It is a different subject that interests me: why do children of successful parents go the left-liberal route. Embedded antisemitism and the desire to assimilate explains a lot.”
It’s like when a leftist assumes that wealth came into the world through a magic process which will occur automatically and all that remains is for the wealth to be distributed “equitably.” The child of the successful parents did not have to work hard and earn the wealth, so oftentimes he absorbs the idea that the money will always be there and that he owes it to the world which “granted” it to him (the reality is that his parents earned it and gave it to him) to give some of it back.
Ms. Sparks, you are mistaken that we are unfamiliar with the history and development of the various movements. Although I do not have your in-depth knowledge of specifics, I am familiar enough.
I read your article, and I think your understanding of modern Conservatism is deficient. I believe it to actually be rather a new thing. It has elements of the old, as well as Populism and other things. It seems focused on a few basic things.
Human nature – All the pet theories, the underlying assumptions of many mkovements are mere fantasies. Humans are what we are. Unintended consequences are a result of ignoring the reality of human behavior.
Limited government – This means limiting power by diffusing it. If you provide a power structure of any kind, the sick people who just cannot feel self-justified without power will flock to it like junkies to a drug. It is important that we ensure that such power junkies be able to do as little harm as possible. It is how we ensure our own freedom, by denying power to the junkies.
Morality – Moderates often repeat that they do not want the Conservatives “imposing their morality upon the rest of us”. This is buying into a Leftist lie. Conservaitves seek to maintain the morality that has existed for millenia. These are necessary for restraining the worst of human nature. We are protectors, not attackers. It is the other side trying to change things. Besides, do you really want politicians to check their values at the door? Really? Morality goes beyond just specific issues. It is ethics as well. Personal conduct. The whole ball of wax.
The tropes – This is I we feel your analysis falls apart. All the various movements may have their doctrinal differences and different histories, but it is all merest words. The people who start, or hijack, these movements are all about power. Power. Patronage. Privilege. In actual practice, there is no difference between a Democrat, a Social Democrat, a Socialist, a Communist, a Fascist, or an Islamist. With them, there are no real rules. There is only Power. They sacrifice it all on the altar of Power. Like a junkie jonesing for his fix, they will all kill you if you get between them and their Power. The rhetoric is only a means to Power.
Modern Conservatism is a rejection of the seeking of Power. Our Founding Fathers were like this, suspicious of any and all power structures, knowing human nature. Washington was offered a crown, and rejected it. He could have been President for Life. He voluntarily stepped down and went back to farming. We are merely undergoing a second American Revolution, a return to the eschewing of Power, like our Founders.
The Left has only been able to do what they have done, because real Conservatives, by nature, do not seek the power of government. So we are willing to tolerate a certain amount of nonsense. We have passed that point now, thus, the Tea Parties. “All that is required for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good men to do nothing.” – Burke We have good men (and women) stepping forward to serve, in order to deny the power-junkies their fix.
It is now not about Power group versus Power group. It is not about Statist Democrats versus Statist Republicans. It is Power group versus non-Power group. As it should be.
I would put it far more bluntly than you or Solway would.
Leftists are liars, in the shameful tradition of Satan himself.
Anyone who believes what leftists say is doomed.
Why modern liberals are 100% wrong about everything
Indeed, David. Quite wonderful.
I would like to extend the argument down a slightly different path, or perhaps just create my own tributary here.
Leftists not only engage in the creation of their own wet paper-mache’ words, phrases and verbal vapors…they create wet paper-mache’ “results” and then work the game backwards to justify the “results”.
Take competition as an example. Leftists are terrified of natural order, winners/losers and power of incremental distinction grown from having to achieve mastery at ever increasingly harder levels…on a level playing field.
Leftists instead, wish to pre-ordain the outcome in a rigged “results orgy” and then deconstruct the path by which one “achieves” the phony result. They then give “awards and prizes” for “accomplishment”…which is nothing more than a fool’s trinket. The pomp and circumstance surrounding the “awards ceremony” give off a flavor of rich, top-risen cream. In reality, it’s curdled and sour milk for pretenders, fakes and frauds.
From the ridiculous to the sublime, leftists have invaded kiddie sports…with the rather inane notion of not keeping score, having everyone play with an announced disregard for actual achievement…and they retard the progress of everyone so as to spare the possible “deselection” of anyone. The “awards” are then given out for “participating” and specifically NOT awarded for “achieving”.
In the adult version of the mollycoddling, intermeddling, over-mommying “kiddie ball” are ALL of the “awards” ceremonies that have now been cheapened and made into grand farce. The Pulitzer is a leftist back-patting fest, with the elimination of anything to the right of Trotsky.
The Nobel is a Norwegian piece of worthless tin, given to people with zero accomplishments, outright traitors and frauds, just as long as they march in lockstep with leftist ideology.
And Hollywood gorges on the tedious, eye-glazing, numbing, droning hours and hours of stuttering bimbos in tight dresses and making the inarticulate into an display piece of cringe-making regularity. Not quite satisfied with just one of these remedial spectacles, the narcissist’s hall of fame produces them as if Henry Ford had made the brain dead an assembly line item.
Golden Globes, Cannes, the Emmy’s, the Oscars…watching a leftist speak without a teleprompter, a script and an editing team to call “cut” 85844 times…is actually a painful experience.
Not that I have anything against watching beautiful women, half-clothed, prance around and try to act and sound regal. Eye candy that rots the brain has a place in the entertainment of the masses. It’s when the leftist reportage treats them as if their words are wisdom and should be heeded that we need to snap back to reality. The bimbo and himbo faction are not heed-worthy. We need to separate fantasy from reality.
And now, we have circled back to the beginning. Being a leftist is the act of intentionally not separating fantasy from reality. It is the creation of a world as you want it to be and refusing to live in the world as it is. Inventing words that fulfill the absence of reality is a by-product of trying to live permanently in a world that does not exist.
You have to lie to others, because you have to lie to yourself.
It becomes malignant, when you hate the people who try to force you to live in the real world. Or, have to defend themselves against your infusion of fraud, hoax, distortion…into the rules governing every aspect of their lives. Leftists have intruded into the very essence of living in the world…and snapping us back to reality is jarring to their senses. They react in a fierce and ferocious protection of their fantasy.
They do not know how to live in the real world. And it terrifies them when anyone or anything confronts them on it. Watch a leftist politician the next time they face an actual objective question…from a journalist not on the fantasy “team”. They recoil in horror and then fall into a rage. Every time.
Being a leftist is not only a mental disease, it’s a personality disorder. Marxist Schizophrenia combined with malignant narcissism.
The odd thing is, they make great BS artists. And they can take over an entire country, invade all of its key offices, all of its pop culture, all of its mass media. Making the eradication of the disease and the return to normalcy…nearly impossible.
Dear CF
Your analysis is spot-on.
David
cfbleachers-By the way, isn’t it interesting to note, that one of the grandfathers of leftism and language manipulation/bastardization is none other than Noam Chomsky, of linguistic fame/infamy?
See the “Anti-Chomsky Reader,” a collection of different essays about Chomsky, including some about his vaunted linguistic theory.
Two points -
First, with regard to the leftist rejection of competition and winning, does this mean the end of football, and the end of Obama’s beloved basketball? What about the Olympics? What about chess competition? Oh, and does this mean that families will be forbidden to play Monopoly and other board games? These are, after all, focused on..winning.
Second – with regard to Adam’s comment on Chomsky..he’s certainly a political leftist, but with regard to linguistics, he’s not into the subjective phenomenology of the Saussure/Jameson etc people. Chomsky is focused on the deep structure organizational properties of language and this has nothing to do with the more immediate meaning-of-words.
I view Chomsky as an epistemologist, not a linguist.
He has done great work. But, astoundingly, he concludes crap from it.
Chomsky is a prime example showing ‘liberalism/leftism’ to be a genetic disorder which messes with dopamine/serotonin functions in a manner which favors altruism.
Sort of like cochlear disorders which make a person turn left whenever he moves.
(PS: yes, I meant to write “he”, not “she or he”, because “he” is the proper collective form in English.)
I see your point about Chomsky as an epistemologist rather than linguist.
And thanks, thanks, for your comment on the gender neutral meaning of ‘he’. I get ‘tiffed’ when people are ‘politically correct’ and use ‘he/she’ or other such trivia.
Chomsky as an epistemologist, ??
I thought cockroaches were insects. go figure
CF,
Very insighful comments and right on the mark. I coach baseball for youths that range in age from 8 – 10 years old. When I had a meeting with the parents of these kids, I told them that they would be getting a trophy only if the team won their division league. I almost had a riot on my hand as the majority of these parents could not even comprehend the notion of a getting a trophy only if the team accomplished and actually won something. It starts early, and is never ending.
One more note, that I have seen lots of other places, but bears repeating. I also ran the sign ups for this league, and given what Barry Obozo has submitted to the lame stream media, he would NOT be eligible to play in our local baseball league. But Obozo can be POTUS?
The Nobel is a Norwegian piece of worthless tin, given to people with zero accomplishments, outright traitors and frauds, just as long as they march in lockstep with leftist ideology.
I’m afraid I have to take strong exception to this point. A slight change, if accepted by the author, would make me much happier with this paragraph: simply changing the first “is” to “has become”. Or perhaps “tends to be”.
Case in point: Solzhenitsyn won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1970. I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that Solzhenitsyn “marched in lockstep with leftist ideology”. Quite the contrary: he bore witness to the immense inhumanity of that same ideology.
Mind you, his most important work, in my opinion, was The Gulag Archipelago which he did not release until a few years after winning the Nobel Prize. Perhaps the Nobel committees didn’t quite understand how passionately Solzhenitsyn opposed Marxism when he won in 1970 based solely on his then-published works like A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, First Circle, or Cancer Ward. I vaguely remember claims at the time that Solzhenitsyn was a Communist who just wanted to reform Marxism; perhaps the Nobel committee bought into that and awarded the prize on that basis….
Henry…”has become” was intended, but unclear. Thank you for the point, it is well taken.
Norway awards the Nobel for peace.
Sweden awards the others – literature, physics, maths, etc.
Basically correct, except there is no Nobel in mathematics.
Nice work, cf! Excellent vivisection. Wonderful turns of phrase. Seeming top-risen cream actually being soured milk. Nice!
I love when the the commenters here put in long posts which are every bit as good as the articles. Some of you should not take this as encouragement, though.
As to leftism as a mental problem, on this and other grounds I strongly recommend Dr. Sanity: http://drsanity.blogspot.com/ I live in a Detroit suburb and it was always comforting to know that in that hotbed of idiocy, Ann Arbor, there was at least one rational mind at work. Alas, she’s moved to Fresno.
Mr. Solway, this is a brilliant and insightful piece of work and I intend to steal from…I mean cite…it a lot. One thing you do not discuss in depth–not a criticism, you can’t do everything in one article–is what I see as a very important component of the leftist personality, the self-exaltation. Many leftists clearly take that position as a means of demonstrating their righteousness, compassion, and high-minded personalities. It’s one reason why in a NY Times article a few years back about friendships broken over politics it was invariably the leftists who broke off the relationship.
Thomas Sowell has pointed out that if you believe in freedom of speech, free markets, and individual responsibility, you’re someone who believes in those things. But if you believe in “peace” and “social justice” then that becomes part of your personality and attacks on your ideas are, ipso facto, an attack on you.
But certainly the Obama administration underscores your main point. Cash for Clunkers turned out to be a huge waste of money whose main effect was to drive up the cost of the used cars poorer people drive? That really wasn’t the point of the policy, which was to feel good about yourself and your commitment to the environment. The stimulus apparently was a virtually complete waste of billions upon billions of dollars? You had good intentions, what’s the next idea?
I used to be a sort of leftist and in my own small way I try to emulate John Maynard Keynes–someone mentioned he had shifted position on a certain issue. “When I learn new facts I change my opinions,” he replied. “And what do you do, sir?” But Keynes had a mind concerned with the outside world, not with his own self-regard.
An interesting article but George Orwell already described the damage to the lexicon years ago in “1984″. The age of “Newspeak” is what we are living in. It will soon become impossible to express some thoughts because the language has become so twisted and words no longer mean what they used to. When the language becomes distorted to the point it can no longer describe reality but only the political version of it instead, well we are truely screwed.
I was wondering how long it would take before some one realized that George Orwell already brilliantly described this phenomenon as “New Speech” in 1984.
The word is newspeak.
One of my current favourites is a Progressive will be on the Rachel Maddow, or Ed Show, and state that Corporations are making record profits and the Rich have record wealth. The poor are get relatively poorer. Now the logical conclusion drawn from this is that we must tax the rich and the corporations at a higher rate or the rich are somehow stealing from the poor (The poor are, well poor, and don’t have any money so how can this be?) This is typically what qualifies as logic to the Progressive. Find a few true facts of some sort. Find a conclusion that you want. State the facts. Then state the conclusion. Never mind that the conclusion drawn has no direct correlation or dependency on the facts presented.
rrbs,
That is a simple and brilliant point. One of those obvious lessons which is so often overlooked.
In other words, it’s only the stupid thief who steals from the poor. The smart thief steals from those who HAVE something. As Willie Sutton answered when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is!”
Somehow Roman tax collectors and corrupt Church officials managed to extort the poor and make a good racket out of it- the key is making up for quality with quantity. Extract but a silver shekel or two from each of thousands of people and it adds up to talents of silver. It’s like the numbers racket- take a 40% vig on nickel and dime bets, but take lots of bets so that your two and four cent unit profits turn into hundreds of dollars a week.
A perfect example of this was Obama’s rant about “bitter people who cling to guns and religion”.
He was speaking to a gathering of the “faithful” (a fund-raiser) and was unaware that anyone who was not “of the faithful” was present, let alone recording him for posterity. As such, he felt free to tell the fawners what he really thought of people who did not share his antipathy for the Second Amendment or Christianity. (Let’s face it- they are two parts of Western civilization he resents even more than he dislikes the rest.)
The fact that his perception of “those people” was inaccurate, and frankly insulting, was and is irrelevant, as far as he is concerned. Like most leftists, The One lives in a world of “constructs”- artificial conceptions based not on facts, but on his own perceptions filtered through his own preconceived notions. (In his case, starting with , “I Am Perfect”.)
These constructs literally take the place of reality for such people, and when reality turns out differently, they reject not the inaccurate construct, but the stubbornly-different reality. (They also resent the hell out of reality for not being the way they think it is, and get very angry at anybody they think they can blame for reality’s refusal to toe the mark.)
What this means is that when Obama was purulating on that subject, he and his audience were on the same wavelength. To them, such constructs ARE “reality”- the real thing need not apply. They are always right, and they know it. And when they have power, they will force reality to “change” to fit their constructs.
I’d say they needed a large dose of Alfred Korzybski and General Semantics, but my guess is that there would be a severe allergic reaction.
Rather like the Red Queen & Co.’s reaction to Alice.
clear ether
eon
Nice comments. These people live in a world constructed by their own words rather than within objective reality. This is a VIRTUAL reality. It does not recognize the external objective world. In this sense, anything one says or thinks – is ‘real’. And therefore, ‘what I say three times is real’.
Yes, and Obama was clearly wrong. Except after his election, there was a shortage of bullets (guns), and an uptick in anti Islam movements around the country (religion).
Do you have any reason to believe that, other than wanting it to be true?
Some facts would make you sound sane, or closer to it.
Facts?
Since Obama’s elections, ammunition sales are through the roof. The factories are going 24/7, yet still cannot keep up with the demand. Ammunition flies off the shelf. It is our one growth industry in America.
Anti-Islam? How about the Congressional hearings. Rep. King ring a bell with you? Did we have Congressional hearings about Islam under Bush?
Do we really have to provide the obvious?
Okay, let’s try on some agenda-less, plain talk, story telling on for size without choosing sides and according to a value system.
Can anyone tell me why the people in this village should receive one single dollar of tax money?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-village-with-the-numbers-not-the-image-of-the-poorest-place.html?hp
because obama adores them as much as he does hamas, that must be it
This is a basic longstanding societal tradition; it’s found in Israel as well, where the ultra orthodox Jews (about 10%) do not work (or pay taxes) because they claim that ‘their work’ is to study the Torah. The community supports them. They are also absolved of any military duty – which all Israeli youth of both genders, must undergo.
The ultraorthodox women do not study -and thus may work, but their traditions, such as not being in the same room as a man, not allowed to drive make it difficult for them in the job sector. And of course, they have large families – at least 8 children is average – and thus, it is difficult to work outside the home.
On a side note, the societal traditions of the ultra-orthodox have obvious similarities with those of Islam – including clothing (women must cover their hair often via a wig), separation of the genders, a focus on the religious texts..etc..A key difference is that Judaism is an isolate rather than imperialist ideology…but intra-societal norms are similar.
So Fed and state money is going to support a religious imperative that shuns pay for play? I love commies, especially when they live off of blood sucking capitalists.
I have my own societal tradition that crosses all cultural and ethnic boundaries that doesn’t include the Marxist Brothers school of finance.
It’s called run your ass out the front door and get a job.
mr may joins the new york sturmer in denouncing hasidic jewish birthrate
And ‘reasonable’ is a ‘sturmer’.
See: semantics, use of.
der sturmer (with an umlaut) was a nazi anti-semitic rag, mr may, look it up
Well, the guy at the tail end of the article makes a very good point.
They all go to private, religious schools. The neighboring county with roughly the same population of children spends $130 million.
Their people do not get into gangs, drugs, or crime. They are not clogging the courts or jails.
Basically, the help they need is with food and electricity… and natal care. And it is not because they are spending their money on designer clothes, electronics, cellphones, or parties.
However, yes, they are gaming the system somewhat. They are getting taxayer subsidies. It would be unsustainable on a national or Statewide level. It should all be done through charity.
I do not have as much trouble with it as other poor people gaming the system, because they do not have all the usual crime and degeneracy of other “poor” towns. This community is the least of our problems. The very least, because it is ONLY a matter of money, not other things.
You’re using the old math example. The new example uses triple letters to further confuse the masses.
It’s 2 + 2 = Pie.
IRS code.
Actually, I think the math goes more like this: 2+2=Pie In The Sky.
For administrators in the Obama Regime, it’s pi.
David,
Brilliant piece; I invite you to vacation on Kappert Isle.
Amusing comments; Richb, I don’t think Orwell meant his words to be the final words on the topic.
Nor do I, as Orwell was really just giving a warning. I read 1984 when I was about 10 or 11. I was a huge sci-fi fan and read anything in the local library. That book scared the bejesus out of me like no other has to this day.
And why does the left do this? Because they persist in their “unconstrained vision”, as Thomas Sowell has so brilliantly described it in his book ‘A Conflict of Visions’. They seek the perfectibility of mankind, and the perfect society that will ensue. If man always has a tragic piece of him that is evil, simply don’t talk about it! If the latest progressive policy has malevolent unplanned consequences, simply ignore them! If the framers of the Constitution indicated that there were limits on the federal government, simply redefine them! And on and on it goes. Do you finally understand that there can be no arguing with these people, there can be no compromise with them, there is no way to change their minds? The more you think that dialog, voting, and business-as-usual will stop the left and bring our society back from the brink of madness, the more you are deluding yourself.
WAKE UP!!! YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!!!
Another great book by Thomas Sowell is “The Vision of the Anointed.”
The difference is between people who live in ‘Virtual Reality’, and those who live in ‘Objective Reality’.
Virtual Reality has no connection to the world of objective objects and actions; it’s created by one’s imagination and expressed in words and images. This is the Platonic Cave.
Objective Reality exists on its own, independent of and external to us – and outside of our words and images. This is the Aristotelian world.
The thing is, with Virtual Reality, you can, since it is imaginary, plan and plot any future that you desire/or don’t desire. There’s nothing to connect the words to reality.
This is Obama’s world, where each speech he gives is specific to an audience – and contradicts not only reality and facts – but contradicts a speech he gave two days ago.
Another point is that the Virtual World is a dependent world. You’ll find people who live in this imaginary realm and who are disconnected to the hard accountability of reality – are dependents. They may be part of the academic and civil service, these people are unconnected to reality, with tenured jobs, with no accountability for their performance – and dependent on the profitability of the REAL economy…the industrial economy.
Or..they may be part of the underclass, impoverished, peasants with no land, no property or goods – dependent on the vagaries and goodwill of the govt or ‘the gods’.
Both types of dependency move into the Virtual Realm where objective reality disappears and they live, totally, within their superstitions, images and words.
A society that permits its people to live, as a majority, in a virtual realm, loses its capacity to survive…for it has moved into a passive, dependent and alienated state. Removing oneself from the objective world is pathological.
Obama is right about one thing. His audiences don’t pay attention to anything that doesn’t fit their own realities, which invariably are designed to move wealth and power from others to themselves.
So, we hear him saying totally contradictory things from one day to the next and view him as a liar and a fool since, in our view, lying is an act that is eventually destined to be discovered and punished.
But to his audiences, he isn’t lying. They aren’t even aware of and don’t care about the contradictions in what he says. They hear what they want to hear and pay no attention to what he says to somebody else tomorrow.
It seems to me that he has made a profound discovery that is foundation of his success. Even Clinton, the greatest previous liar in American history, made an effort to establish some kind of continuity in his narrative. Obama doesn’t bother and it doesn’t seem to have any impact at all in luring the bees to his honey.
Sometimes this is so shocking that it leaves his opponents breathless. The unbelievable phrase from his townhall the other day that “we simply can’t spend more than we take in” is a mind-bending example. Yet, we all know that his audience accepted that breathtaking lie without question. And even more unbelievably, the lie will be quoted by the make believe press thousands of times as proof of his fiscal rationality.
This is related to the author’s premise that leftists redefine the language to suit their purposes. That premise, and Obama’s discovery that lying never harms him, are subsets of the most foundational leftist principle of all: they simply do not accept, in any way, history, morality, truth, shame, justice or ANY of the millennia-old behaviors, rules, traditions and guidelines that are the basis of not just civilization, but humanity itself.
Why we debate them is beyond me. There is no common ground for discussion with, no less to debate people who reject our most basic assumptions about life.
We are on the cusp of one of the most significant turning points in history. While we angrily revile the apostate Donald Trump for daring to volunteer his services for our righteous team, they methodically dismantle our civilization by ignoring every one of the rules we foolishly imagine protect it.
We debate them not for their sake, because that would be casting pearls before swine, but rather we debate them for the sake of the audience, that we may show them the true face of Progressivism: lying, covetous, hateful and lustful.
“Why we debate them is beyond me.
We are on the cusp of one of the most significant turning points in history. … they methodically dismantle our civilization by ignoring every one of the rules we foolishly imagine protect it.”
I have reached the same conclusion. At first, it seemed as though expostulating, correcting, explaining, clarifying and so on should be enough to produce a dialogue but it soon became clear that nothing like that was intended or wanted, notwithstanding the words used.
Who knows if they mean to lie or just lie without meaning?
Jaw, jaw is finished, I am afraid.
Congrats, PJM. I don’t often share articles–and this is the first time I can recall ever sharing one of yours. We are living in a society descending into Bedlam.
“We are living in a society descending into Bedlam.” and all are watching it spiral down the drain. I have shared this also. Thanks for the comment.
Mr. Solway,
You write, “The essential gradients of Leftspeak . . . in an age of ubiquitous and instantaneous media dissemination, render us both vulnerable to our adversaries and morally and intellectually debased.”
While true, I submit that this leftist strength is also its greatest weakness. That same instantaneous media dissemination also provides everyone with the instantaneous proof of just how superficial and fatuous those claims of Leftspeak really are.
Spot-on!! This is the most exact characterization to date of the topology of the logic of the Left: it’s really nothing but a concrete instance (after all, axiom of choice not really welcome there…) of a context-free, self-referential propositional domain, made of internal objects predicated over closed semantic orbits of referentially-excluded Möbius strips!!! Couldn’t have stated it better myself!
Brilliant piece that cuts to the heart of why it’s almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion with a lefty. They don’t just see things differently, they have different eyes.
Leftism should be understood fundamentally as war with reality or the attempt to revoke reality. That’s why leftists always try to subvert the language. Leftists for some reason simply (I suspect it’s genetic) can’t accept what is, and attempt to improve on it incrementally and rationally, but must always attempt to “overcome” it and substitute the ineffable reality only they can see. This explains leftonomics, which should have died out given its long record of absymal effects. Yet “Marxists” still hold forth in our universities and governments, and leftonomics is always the first recourse when the left obtains power. In a different context, that old lefty Pete Seeger sang: “When will they ever learn?” The answer is: never. They’re incapable of learning. That’s why they have to be kept out of power.
Not to be a killjoy here, but…
I wonder if it isn’t possible to frame an argument without the famous buzzwords of the mob
that is,
couldn’t we possible begin to create a responsible dialog where every effuped idea isn’t the responsibility of the LEFT?
An election is coming and I would like to see a decent responsible leader in place, someone like George Bush.
These repetitious diatribes are, as the YEARS go by beginning to sound tedious, like monotonous chants of mountain monks.
You don’t erase the Liberals, you create the Liberals, when … Oh,
Never mind
The Left are Idiots
I guess I should thank you clowns for getting them back in power
Thank you Right Wing Pud Nuts
Debate is dead. It died with the Democrats nominating BO to run for president. It died when Bush and policies were attacked for years and years. It died when Clinton said “it depends on the the definition of what the word is, is”. Since, any and all debate has been killed. Leftist doublespeak and attacks. If you try to follow any of the Lefts dialogue you wonder what was said. New language, “speak in circles”.
24. CKeezee
“This is like an addiction for y’all. Left, right…who gives a crap? Let it go. Try being free, it’s very hard work but so much more rewarding than chasing mice-” being of an independent mind is helpful. It helps you see through smoke and mirrors. The mice I chase are our leaders who are gutless and lack male parts.
Ladies and Gentleman it has been a pleasure as always reading your posts
today. Excellent article by the way, explains the term “Magical Thinking.” (this is a sincere compliment)
As but one of countless possible examples of manipulating the language for political purposes, consider the word “racism.”
To a normal person, the definition in Merriam-Webster is adequate: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
However, that definition is insufficient for the Left because it implies that anyone who believes in the inherent superiority of a particular race is a racist. No, that will not do. So, they’ve been pushing a definition of racism that adds that someone can’t be a racist if they don’t have the power to act on that belief. That allows them to argue that minorities who lack power can not possibly be racists no matter how they treat others. It’s a blatantly self-serving attempt to manipulate the language.
“In the final analysis, the leftist use of words arises from the need to achieve a position of mastery or domination.”
Liberals have to talk about policies in generalizations and abstractions, because only generalizations and abstractions suit their need to model masses of people and the complexities of life. Liberals believe that applying certain models leads to definite results; like their model of taxing the rich naturally results in “equality” for the poor, or that government provided “health insurance” is “fair”.
However, liberal models are typically bereft of substantial thought, introspection, or nuance. Their models are simply blunt tools that may work well in some cases, but rather infrequently work well in the general case that represents real life.
Liberals use rhetoric to excuse the failure of their models when applied in real life. It is their way of reassuring themselves that nothing is wrong with their model, but it is a form of self-deception.
That self-deception is apparent to others, and it is literally equivalent to the rhetorical contradictions that Orwell described. Liberals find it comforting when “equality” is established by “oppressing” individual liberty by imposing their model of taxation on everyone. Instead of deeply analyzing the balance between equality and liberty, liberals superficially use language to justify to themselves that they are objective and omniscient, when that is not possible.
Simply, much of liberalism is an inferiority complex that is supported by mantras of highly subjective, abstract “truths”. Conservatives do not attempt to model the world in the same way. They presume that they are not objective, and they desire individuals to learn the abstractions of life, rather than have government define those abstractions for them.
For that reason of promoting “self-discovery”, liberals attack conservatives because conservatives would “allow” individuals to suffer by not imposing liberal models on mankind. However, suffering is always an aspect of life that must be learned, and dealt with. Suffering informs us of the world, and allows us to have empathy for fellow humans. Also, suffering is not necessary with a conservative model, it is only a temporary state of being.
Liberals should get over themselves. They have not found utopia on earth with their rhetoric. They should stop pretending that they have.
If you were so sure of your own ideals, you would not need to make liberals out to be genetically deficient lying machines. Yet you claim from the get go that liberals are the ones with closed minds. It would seem to me the best way to dismiss ideas from liberals would be to make them out to almost be evil, then you could dismiss away any idea you disagree with instead of having a rational discussion. I mean this is a pretty low line of attack on another group of people from your own country. Even if disagree with the ideology does not make them stupid or lairs.
Oh, Brian, don’t get your panties in a wad. Nobody thinks liberals are genetically deficient lying machines. I doubt whether genetics and liberalness are causally related. On the other hand, they do indeed have closed minds.
And just exactly whaddaya think it is that makes them stupid or liars?
Well, you may have it wrong. There is a Skinnerian reward for false altruism with some people, and it’s being called the “liberal gene DRD4″.
When I said “Chomsky is a prime example showing ‘liberalism/leftism’ to be a genetic disorder which messes with dopamine/serotonin functions in a manner which favors altruism.” — I wasn’t whistling Dixie.
Go to:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-liberal-gene.html
Very limited social circles.
Liberals believe in codifying ideals in laws that are administered by government onto the people. That is how certain liberals are. They would have us use a 2000 page legislative document to produce an 8000 page code that represents how health insurance should work for over 300 million people.
That is a far different mentality from conservatives, who believe that markets allow individuals to make decisions and to hone and improve themselves. It is then their customers, not the government who allows them to succeed. Close mindedness is clearly a liberal trait given this example, as well as many others.
This closed-mindedness is justified by liberals because they believe they are helping more people with their model of the world. The believe they can maximize the utility of country when government codifies what they believe to be absolute truths.
For example, Al Gore justifies the government imposed and sanctioned transition to alternative energy sources because he believes he is saving the world. How can you argue with someone who believes they are saving the world? Any position that is contrary to his is destroying the world.
Well, obviously there are shades of gray. But to codify his opinions as law, and then to demagogue those who would oppose his opinions is a bit too much?
So the open-minded approach is to accept that individuals do have opposing views, but government’s purpose should not be to police everything and anything. The government should define a very broad path with legislation, and allow the private sector to navigate that path in whatever way they see fit. This ‘open-minded’, broad path, model allow both liberals and conservatives to coexist, except that liberals believe that only government can solve problems. Obama said so himself at the onset of the economic crisis, something to the effect of “Only government can solve this economic crisis”. Instead, it he should have said: “Only the private sector can solve this economic crisis.” That would have been an open-minded statement.
Thanks, you gave Brian a better answer.
Mike,
Your excellent post reminds me of a CS Lewis quote.”Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
We ARE sure of our ideals. That’s HOW we know Libs are liars.
Do you have any capacity for rational thought, Brian?
der new york sturmer denounces jewish spawning, and mr may concurs
der new york sturmer denounces high jewish birthrate, and mr may concurs
Thank you for the excellent article Mr. Solway. The perversion of language is a tool in the arsenal of the clever socialist/Marxist/statist that transforms reality into the virtual world. It is dishonest at its core and intended to obfuscate, to anesthetize the audience.
Much like the stealth socialism discussed in Stanley Kurtz’s book “Radical in Chief”, the tactic is to concoct an issue and infuse populist rhetoric around it to generate support rather than be truthful about the intentions. One example, “democratize” the corporations, banks, institutions, by adopting 1) cumulative voting, which ensures representation of a small minority by changing the rules for how elections work, or 2) by forcing adoption of regulations aimed at achieving a socialist outcome (eg. lowering lending standards to fit quotas, by force of government penalty).
Or how about the “Free Choice Act” which would eliminate secret ballot voting for unionization and allow thugs to strong arm workers into signing suppport cards to mandate union representation. No voting would be necessary and the result achieved as soon as a majority of workers had signed cards. The name is intentionally dishonest and misleading but extremely useful in its design.
Or how about the “Fairness Doctrine”? Who gets to rule on what is fair or not? One person? Or is it a few people on a committee? Who appoints those select few people? Is there any chance that it won’t be supremely political? Any chance at all?
What exactly would be “fair” about the “Fairness Doctrine”?
It is suppression of dissent. It is not “fair” that people should have to hear the “lies” of the other side. There IS no other side. Or won’t be if they get their way.
This article is an excellent synopsis of a portion of: “The Master and his Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” by Iain McGilchrist. I would heartily recommend it as the definitive treatise on the very different roles of the brain hemispheres. (at 460 pages with an additional 120 pages of references and footnotes in fine print it is not a quick read). If you are interested in this topic check it out on Amazon.
This is like an addiction for y’all. Left, right…who gives a crap? Let it go. Try being free, it’s very hard work but so much more rewarding than chasing mice-
too many people miss the point about the indoctrination into the leftist mindset in the education system.
“Remnick praises PA leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, “who have shown themselves willing to make the concessions needed for a peace deal.”
And yet not a single such concession exists. None.
For the left it is not just that the meaning of words is corrupted, it is that the word itself, applied with authority, makes it so. Ask any lefty why the “illegal” blockade of Gaza is “illegal” they cannot find any such law. Instead they will run though a list of organizations who they think have said so and look in all sincerity at this as proof.
Leftists are collectivists who think themselves rebellious. The Harvard/UCSD study which claims to have found a “liberal gene” also found that only those individuals with the gene, who were socially popular adolescents were likely to become liberals.
Well think about what it takes to be popular in middle school. You must be first of all a conformist, right friends, clothes, attitudes, but in a way that seems cool and edgy. You must have a certain lack of empathy even cruelty for the outsiders while retaining loyalty within the inside group, always conditional of course. You must be a social animal, no moody deep thinking. Devotion to individual talent or interest is uncool. You should good enough at what you do in a superficial way but not too good.
All of these traits describe leftists in adulthood. Once with have decided that certain companies are “greedy”, the climate is a “catastrophe”, or a dictator is a “reformer” the matter is over.
“The Harvard/UCSD study which claims to have found a “liberal gene”…”
…in an unusually silly bit of ‘research’. That poor fellow brought this study up to me and I left it alone. I didn’t want to waste keystrokes on it, or ruin his day, or have him poke his head up through the tinfoil hat.
“The Harvard/UCSD study which claims to have found a “liberal gene”…”
…is an unusually silly bit of ‘research’. That poor fellow brought this study up to me and I left it alone. I didn’t want to waste keystrokes on it, or ruin his day, or have him poke his head up through the tinfoil hat.