Enemies of Language...By Victor Davis Hanson

[mystery-ak]

 Enemies of Language
What would happen if conservatives started to change the words we use for political ends?
By Victor Davis Hanson — November 24, 2016

Throughout history, revolutionaries of all stripes have warped the meaning of words to subvert reality.

And now here we go again, with another effort — spearheaded by the media and universities — to use any linguistic means necessary to achieve political ends.

“Sanctuary city” is a euphemism for the local and state nullification of federal law — a subversive tactic that dates back to the nullification crises during the Andrew Jackson administration and, later, in the years leading up to the Civil War.

This makes a mockery of the simple constitutional principle that cities and states cannot subversively pick and choose which federal laws to obey. 

The term “sanctuary” would never apply to conservative jurisdictions that in similar fashion sought to offer “sanctuary” to those dissidents who disobeyed federal gun registration, income tax, or environmental laws.

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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/442459/print

[Doug Loss]

This bit from VDH needs to be emphasized:

The danger of destroying rules of language is that revolutionaries of any stripe can join this crooked game.

What if a right-wing movement wished to redefine “sanctuary cites” as “subversive cities”?

Would it be any more biased to call the sites of university post-election counseling services “progressive lamentation centers”?

Would a visitor from Mars be less confused about “safe spaces” if they were rebranded by right-wingers as “segregated set-asides”? Would “microaggressions” be better understood if they were renamed “nanno thought crimes”?

Perhaps “trigger warnings” could be rephrased by counter-revolutionaries as “censorship protocols”?

Of course, no one would like such linguistic payback.

There would be howls of protest if the new Trump administration rebranded extraconstitutional executive orders as “pen and phone liberation acts,” or named its substitute for Obamacare “The Real Affordable Care Act.”

To prevent this endless cycle of corrupting words, members of the media and academia should act as our linguistic guardians. Instead, for short-term political gain, they have abandoned their professional responsibilities to become our worst subverters of language.