Patrick McSweeney


 

Hijacking the Language

The path to higher taxes and socialism begins by co-opting the meaning of words. Look how politicians today equate the word "invest" with higher government spending.


 

The late Richard Weaver, one of America’s leading thinkers, is remembered principally for two observations. One is that ideas have consequences.  The other is that the corruption of a people begins with their corruption of language.

 

In a previous column ("People's Republic of Virginia," June 7, 2004) I argued that the idea of the need for a constantly expanding role for government to match the rising complexity of our society was the stated premise for the massive tax increase approved at the recent special session. That idea will have profound and inevitable consequences if it isn’t displaced by another, competing idea. One obvious consequence is an ever-rising level of taxation.

 

Only anarchists believe that all taxes are evil. Those who are not will readily acknowledge that taxes are justified to pay for certain essential governmental functions. What is “essential” has always divided the non-anarchists.

 

For more than a century, there were essentially two camps: the socialists (or communists) and the capitalists. In recent years, a new grouping — advocates of a Third Way — has appeared.

Former President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are the most prominent examples of Third Way politicians. They insist that there is a coherent theory of governance somewhere between the extremes of capitalism and socialism.

 

Clinton, who must have been a linguist in a previous life, used words like weapons. In a remarkable account of an intensive revamping of his 1992 presidential campaign just before the Democratic National Convention, Newsweek magazine described a technique used by Clinton that enabled him to watch the emotional response to his speech registered by a focus group as Clinton was speaking.  He found that words such as “work” and “invest” drew a strong, positive reaction.

 

Not surprisingly, Clinton then sprinkled those words throughout his campaign speeches and ads. He continued to invoke those terms over the course of his administration.

 

While the word “socialism” evokes a negative emotional response among most Americans, the word “investment” has the opposite effect. Collective ownership is the hallmark of a socialist system, but Third Way politicians try to disguise their preference for government over private control and ownership by using the language of capitalism.

 

Until Third Way politicians began corrupting the word “invest,” it never included government welfare spending. Webster’s Dictionary defined the word to mean “to put money into business, real estate, stocks, bonds, etc., for the purpose of obtaining an income or profit.”

 

Gov. Mark R. Warner is another Third Way politician.  He, too, has found the power in the word “invest” and uses it routinely to sell his program of tax increases and expanded government.

 

In the absence of an aggressive response to Warner’s language corruption from conservatives, his tactic is working. The imagery of students in new public university facilities, preparing themselves for the challenges of the 21st century is surely as galvanizing and beguiling as the vision of a new Communist order in the Soviet Union was almost a century ago.

 

The truth is that, whether the vision of collective solutions is constructed in straightforward socialist language or the corrupted language of the Third Way, this preference for ever-expanding government doesn’t work or, if it does, it is incompatible with personal liberty.

 

If conservatives want to stop the drift toward more and more government, they had better begin to engage their opponents with a frontal assault. They would be well-advised to challenge the idea that expanded government programs will solve our daunting social problems.

 

First, they must end the corruption of language.

 

-- June 7, 2004

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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