-Caveat Lector-
http://www.newaus.com.au/us203spooner.html
The Left and the corruption
of language and thought
by Patrick Spooner
TNA News with Commentary
Saturday 24 February 2001
I have mentioned before the instantaneous reversal of parity by the
left and their docile, obedient followers (journalists and
“educationists” mainly) when the iron curtain was dropped and the
Soviet Union was, at last, revealed in its full glory. Finally the left
was forced to admit that it really was what critics of socialism had
been saying it had been for decades: a gigantic charnel house
coffin, reeking with slave labor camps and death camps, in which
the people had been kept in a state of terror, poverty, and
miserable, drab, slavery for seven decades. ( Of course the left
knew this; but, to them, the preservation of the socialist myth was
more important than the freedom and lives of 300 million people, so
they stayed absolutely silent until the revelations of 1989/90).
But when their faces were, at last, rubbed in the dried blood of tens
of millions of victims, they immediately began referring to those who
wanted to largely abandon socialism and introduce some economic
freedom as the ‘left’, and those who wished to retain socialism as
the “right”. Martin Gardner, the American philosopher long beloved
for his “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American, once
wrote a book called The Ambidextrous Universe about left and
right, and the phenomenon of parity reversal. Perhaps he should
publish a new edition, and mention this as an example: it is certainly
as bizarre as anything else he mentioned in the book.
Another example of the abuse of language by the left which I think I
have mentioned is the description of Pol Pot as a “capitalist”, once
the truth had finally been revealed to the left (everybody else knew
what was happening only weeks after Pol Pot seized power; it was
not leftist media darling John Pilger that revealed the truth to the
world, but the Cambodian people themselves. Millions of words of
evidence of atrocities unspeakable even by Soviet or Nazi standards
poured from the mouths of refugees, which the left chose to totally
ignore, except to accuse these tragically affected people — most of
them ordinary peasants — of being “landlords” or “gold hoarders”).
To mention another case: those on the left commonly describe
themselves as “progressive”, implying that everybody else,
especially those who believe in individual rights, are somehow
backward. However, socialism is anything but a “progressive”
philosophy; rather, it is very close to the feudalist societies of
medieval Europe. The reader is recommended to Barbara
Tuchman’s The Distant Mirror. Here she gives a description of
feudal society and its human relationships. The parallels with a
socialist state or a modern, centrally directed, authoritarian welfare
state, are striking. The land-owning nobility were the equivalent of
the government and its bureaucrats today.
The church, supposedly pure and highly moral, but in fact
hypocritical, venal, and totally opposed to human liberty, have,
today, been replaced by the college and university: today’s
academics are the exact equivalent of the priests of feudal times.
The nobility and the church saw themselves as the protectors of the
poorest class, the serfs. These earthly and spiritual rulers were so
morally pure that, by their own lights, their whole lives were devoted
to the interests of the poor, land-bound serf. And the most reviled
and despised person in feudal society was, of course, the merchant.
He was the equivalent of today's capitalist, and the rulers absolutely
loathed him, and were constantly introducing new laws to fetter him.
The worst thing about the merchant was that he actually had
something to offer the serf besides pious words, perpetual slavery,
and massive theft. He had all kinds of goods, especially cheap
cloths, often imported, which the serf could afford, and which came
in bright hues. This last is very important to somebody who is
otherwise condemned to wearing dark, filthy rags for their whole life;
and the barons and priests, sensing that the serf might actually start
to think about his independence and self-respect, brought in laws
forbidding the underclasses to wear any colors apart from brown
and black. The serf had to, at all times, be kept as a slave beholden
to the banquet hall and the pulpit; the reviled merchant represented
an open threat to this relationship. The merchant wanted the serf to
be free; he would then be a better customer, but the barons
“protected” the serf from such dangerous ideas as freedom and
individual rights.
Socialist dictatorships this century are exactly the same; the laboring
classes have no hope of betterment, while all the positions of money
and power are filled by the idiot children of the ruling clique. The
expository passage in 1984 describes this feature of collectivist
societies very well. The liberation of the poor, and the destruction of
the system that had oppressed them for so long, occurred with the
industrial revolution and free market capitalism. As Lord Acton
pointed out, the social class which has the most to gain from
economic freedom is the laboring poor — the rich, on the other
hand, are greatly threatened by liberty and free movement between
classes. So much for the slippery and evil abuse of language which
sees socialism as “progressive” and freedom as “reactionary”.
Possibly the worst example of language abuse in this nation is that
which sees the word “liberal” as referring to anybody who believes to
a large degree in authoritarian collectivism. This is an atrocious and
utterly dishonest inversion which those who believe in individual
rights should never have tolerated. The word “liberal” is derived from
the ancient Greek word for freedom, and in other countries refers to
exactly that. The now defunct Liberal Party in Britain was the
successor to the Whigs, those who stood for freedom against the
rigid class structuralists of the Tory Party, and, later, the socialist
enslavers of the Labor Party.
It has been said that all people can be divided into two groups:
Platonists and Aristotelians. Plato was the first collectivist
totalitarian; his Republic is the first socialist state. Noam Chomsky,
Al Gore, the Clintons etc are unquestionably Platonists. This
correspondent (and his publisher) are Aristotelians, those who put
the rights of the individual ahead of the whims of Plato’s philosopher
kings (and queens). This Aristotelian group are the true liberals. I
call on anybody who passionately believes in genuine human rights
to reclaim the word “liberal”: we should never have let it go without a
fight.
The reason I am writing about this at such length is that once
language is corrupted, the whole process of thought is corrupted
too. George Orwell made this point painfully clear in 1984. It is
YOUR responsibility to never allow the left to get away with the kind
of language corruption and distortion I have written of here. If you
do, you will find that your children will, eventually, no longer be able,
much less permitted, to think clearly and question Hillaryism and
Goreism. Corrupt language corrupts thought; please, please, never
forget that.
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Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize
the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are
told we must collectivize the nation because the people
are so rich. ~~William F. Buckley Jr.
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