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The Fragility of Free Speech in America

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 21, 2014
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Category: Constitution, Government, Socialism, Truth

The First Amendment of the Constitution reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.” The free exercise of religion has been under assault by the liberalism for a number of years and the assault has accelerated significantly in the last two or three years. Attacks on free speech are increasing but of more recent occurrence.

Attacks on free speech increased significantly with efforts to classify certain opinions as hate speech. The problem with prohibiting hate speech is one of determining what is and what is not hate speech. Most often, the efforts at eliminating hate speech are aimed at the “content” of the speech rather than the intolerable mode of expressing the speech (e.g., violence). Here we are not talking about profanity or obscene language that offends the common decency of a civil society. Speech that is bad or hurtful may not be obscene or profane, and slander and libel laws are available where necessary. Also, enforced tolerance through limitations on the content of hate speech may have the opposite effect—that of promoting even more hateful speech or worse. Most importantly, any limit on free speech, however hateful or hurtful, is a slippery slope at whose base is an abyss in which free speech is not only lost but other liberties as well.

As America races toward a monolithic, all-powerful, all-knowing government, free speech is under attack in a variety of ways.

Government approved speech

We recently wrote of the federal government’s first steps at limiting freedom of the press through proposed Federal Communications Commission’s monitoring of newsrooms to determine bias in the provision of critical information needs as determined by the government. [See: “The New Ministry of Truth 2014”]

Government limits on speech through regulation

But government reach goes beyond the newsroom and into cyberspace. Health-wise, Steve Cooksey was a walking time bomb. He was obese, lethargic, asthmatic, chronically ill, and a pre-diabetic. Ignoring the advice of medical personnel and others, he chose to eat a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet (beef, pork, chicken, leafy vegetables). He lost seventy-five pounds and no longer needed medications. He began sharing his dietary opinions on his Internet blog and interacting with his readers. When asked he would give his opinion, but the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition got wind of his treachery and following a three-month investigation ordered him stop as he was “counseling” and needed a license to do so. The Institute for Justice defended Cooksey’s First Amendment right of free speech citing the fact that Cooksey’s speech “…involves no sensitive relationships (as in psychological counseling, no uniquely vulnerable listeners (as in potential legal clients forced to make snap decisions), and no plausible presumption that the listeners are unable to exercise independent judgment.” Cooksey’s advice was unpaid, freely sought, involved no professional-client relationships. [Will]

Regulatory oversight is a necessary and proper function of government. However, under the expansive interpretation of the Constitution’s general welfare clause beginning 1936, much of regulatory oversight has become an autocratic function of a nanny-state bureaucracy intruding into the lives of a free people capable of making rational decisions without government interference.

Limiting when and where free speech may occur

Free speech is under attack on many of the nation’s colleges and universities. Robert Van Tuinen, a student at Modesto Junior College, was stopped by campus police from distributing copies of the Constitution on the 226th anniversary of its signing. College officials told Van Tuinen that he could get permission to distribute the Constitution if he pre-registered for time in the “free speech zone” which reportedly was small slab of concrete just big enough for two people. However, once registered, Van Tuinen would have to wait for an available opening. Effectively, administration officials used campus police to enforce an unconstitutional rule, declared the campus to be off limits for free speech except for a small “free speech” area, and limited when and how many could use so-called free speech area, all in violation of the First Amendment. [Haynes]

Criminalizing free speech

Want to go to jail for your views—spoken or written? Lawrence Torcello, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, suggests that some scientists and their financial backers may be both morally and criminally negligent if their views contradict a set of facts that the majority of scientists agree upon. As an example, Torcello believes that, “We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.” [Torcello]

Torcello brushes aside free speech concerns by distinguishing between the protected voicing of one’s unpopular beliefs and the funding of a strategically organized campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions. Torcello states that, “Protecting the latter as a form of free speech stretches the definition of free speech to a degree that undermines the very concept.” But Torcello should read the First Amendment again. There is no limit on free speech because it is strategically organized and well-financed. [Torcello] The Left questions the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions without help from the liberal intellectual elites. The problem for the Left is that the public is getting wise to the liberal, radical environmentalist agenda and other pseudo-scientific pronouncements, and the Left’s only recourse is silence their critics.

Writing seventy years ago in his seminal Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek identified the liberal necessity of group-think for the masses to achieve their ends.

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends…Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants. [emphasis added][Hayek, p. 171.]

For liberals, any public criticism or even expressions of doubt tend to weaken public support for the official doctrine, creed, values, or views of the regime. The acts of government must be sacrosanct and exempt from criticism. Even though the great majority may have surrendered independent thought, the minority’s doubt, discontent, and criticisms must be suppressed or silenced. [Hayek, pp. 175-176.]

The suppression of free speech in America ranks high on the liberal agenda because the end of liberalism is socialism, and the end of socialism is totalitarianism. That is why those pesky three little words of “freedom of speech” in the First Amendment are so troubling to the liberal establishment.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Larry G. Johnson, “The Ministry of Truth 2014,” culturewarrior.net, March 7, 2014. http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/on-college-campuses-zoning-out-free-speech (accessed 3-19-14)

Charles C. Haynes, “On college campuses, zoning out free speech,” First Amendment Center, October 14, 2013. www.firstamendmentcenter.org/on-college-campuses-zoning-out-free-speech#tab-section (accessed 3-19-14).

Lawrence Torcello, “Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?” The Conversation, March 13, 2014. https://theconversation.com/is-misinformation-about-the-climate-criminally-negligent-23111##comment_333276 (accessed March 19, 2014).

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom – Text and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1944, 2007), pp. 171, 175-176.

George Will, “An attack on free speech in North Carolina,” Tulsa World, September 27, 2012, A-16.

Newspeak 2014: The Language of Socialism

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 14, 2014
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Category: Archives, Government, Humanism, Socialism, Truth

Truth is the foundation of all morals, and the meaning of truth is obscured in direct proportion to the elasticity allowed in defining the meaning of words within a language. For 1,500 years the source of truth for much of Western civilization has been the Bible. The meaning of words such as truth, freedom, good and evil were relatively inelastic within the Christian worldview. Their meanings were based on absolutes called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. [Johnson, p. 392.] These absolutes were revealed to man by God through His creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians.

Socialism requires an elastic language. For humanists, truth is defined in terms of cultural relativism which requires a suspension of judgment since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all the truth. Therefore, all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—i.e., truth can be manufactured. [Johnson, pp. 392-393.]

Words are the means by which order is achieved in society. The dominant worldview of the members of a society determines the elasticity allowed in defining the meaning of words within the language and ultimately the meaning of truth and the freedom of the individual. The principal worldviews contending for dominance in Western civilization are Christianity and humanism. Christianity leads to truth and freedom. Humanism leads to relativism and socialism whose ultimate end is totalitarianism. Three modern prophets from the mid-twentieth century foresaw the effects of an elastic language with regard to the meaning of words.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984 paints a graphic and unsettling picture of life under a vast, insidious socialistic regime called Ingsoc (acronym for English Socialism) that covers a large part of the globe. (See previous article: The New Ministry of Truth 2014.”) Control of the population is guided by Ingsoc’s Inner Party and its leader, Big Brother, and the Ministry of Truth. The ministry of Truth controls the news media, entertainment, the arts, and publishing and is responsible for propaganda and revision of the historical record to conform them to the government-approved version of events.

The regime invented Newspeak in which speech and writing use words in a way that changes their meaning, especially to persuade people to think a certain way or diminish the range of thought. [Merriam-Webster]

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words…This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give an example, the word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as “This dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds. It could not be used in its old sense of “politically free” or intellectually free” since political freedom and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts… [Orwell, pp. 299-300.]

Once immersed in Newspeak, it becomes relatively easy to doublethink which is the acceptance of two contradictory ideas or beliefs at the same time.

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992)

In his Road to Serfdom, Hayek has much to say about the language of socialism which he considers synonymous with totalitarianism. Whether it is the socialism of extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the institutions of the welfare state or socialism through the nationalization of the means of production and central planning, Hayek rightly believed that the outcome is essentially the same for both systems—totalitarianism. [Hayek, pp. 54-55.] And it is socialism’s perversion of the language (words and their meaning) that is of particular concern. Once the sources of all information are under the control of a totalitarian regime, it has the power to mold the minds of the people. The minds of the people will then be indoctrinated with the precepts of the regime and no others will be tolerated. The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda are destructive to the one of the essential foundation of all morals, that is, “…the sense of and respect for truth.” [Hayek, pp. 171-172.]

Hayek described the means whereby language is perverted by socialism’s propaganda.

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before…And the most efficient technique to the end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a world used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. [Hayek, p. 174.]

The quest for equality in socialistic society becomes an officially enforced inequality. Enforced inequality is labeled the new freedom or “collective freedom” which is not the freedom of the individual “…but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases.” [Hayek, pp. 174-175.]

Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963)

Weaver wrote of the power of the word in Ideas Have Consequences. Weaver accepted the ancient belief that there was “…a divine element present in language. The feeling that to have power of language is to have control over things is deeply imbedded in the human mind.” Weaver believed that the heightened interest in semantics is the most notable development of our time with regard to the study of language. Semanticists question how the fixities of language can account for a changing reality through time. They desire that words not represent truth but a range of perceptions and reflect the circumstances of the user. [Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, pp. 150-151.]

In our world of progressive education, scientism, and mass media, the semanticists have captured the linguistic high ground through redefinition of key concepts. Regarding the consequences thereof, Weaver cut to the heart of the matter in a 1952 essay.

Just as soon as men begin to point out that the word is one entity and the object it represents is another, there set in a temptation to do one thing with the word and another different thing with the object it is supposed to represent; and here begins that relativism which by now is visibly affecting those institutions which depend for their very existence upon our ability to use language as a permanent binder. [Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, pp. 195-196.]

The prophecies of Orwell, Hayek, and Weaver were published between 1944 and 1950. The fulfillment of their prophecies with regard to the perversion of the meaning of words is abundantly evident in twenty-first century America. The ascending humanistic worldview requires that society be organized upon socialistic principles. During the last half of the twentieth century, the redefinition of the meanings of certain words has become the feedstock of socialism’s propaganda machine: multiculturalism, diversity, freedom, tolerance, good, evil, right, wrong, justice, freedom, and equality to name just a few. The new meanings are being used to mold the thinking of society in support of a humanistic worldview and its socialistic agenda.

The enemy of truth and morality is relativism. Relativism is the child of the false and destructive worldview of humanism that is tied to time and therefore temporal. Humanism and other false religions may ascend and dominate for a time, but the seeds of destruction lie in their own falseness. Truth is eternal and therefore a permanent binder that transcends time. Truth rests in the unadulterated word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” [John 1:1, 14a, 17. RSV] In response to Pontius Pilate’s question regarding Jesus’ kingship, Jesus answered, “You say that I am a King. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” [John 18:37. RSV]

Truth is reality, and it is the nature of man to seek and know truth. To know God is to know truth.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 392-393.

George Orwell, 1984, (New York: Signet Classics, 1949, 1950), pp. 299-300.

Merriam-Webster, “newspeak,” w-m.com. http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/ newspeak (accessed March 3, 2014).

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom – Text and Documents, Ed. Bruce Caldwell, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1944, 2007), pp. 54-55, 171-172, 174-175.

Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948, 1984), pp. 150-151.

Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, Eds. George M. Curtis, III and James J. Thompson, Jr., (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 195-196.

The New Ministry of Truth 2014

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 7, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Government, Socialism, Truth

In 1949, George Orwell wrote 1984, a grim novel about an omnipresent government set in Airstrip One, formerly Great Britain but now merely a province of Oceania, a superstate ruled by a political system called English Socialism. Oceania’s leaders are the Inner Party, a privileged elite headed by Big Brother, the pseudo-divine party leader who uses mass media, propaganda, and a cult-like following to create his idealized, heroic, and god-like public image. Oceania is a land of constant war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control. However, the oppressive nature of the regime is justified by Big Brother and the Party in the name of the supposed greater good.

Control of the public’s mind is achieved with the assistance of the Ministry of Truth which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism and controls the news media, entertainment, the arts, and publishing. The Ministry falsifies the historical record where necessary to conform it to the government-approved version of events. To assist in its propaganda and revisionist efforts, the government invented Newspeak, a language used to limit freedom of thought and other expressions of individualism and independent thinking which are considered thought crimes.

In 2014,it appears that America’s current version of Big Brother is attempting to develop his own Ministry of Truth. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hired Social Solutions International, Inc. in 2012 to develop a study and data gathering procedures which were scheduled for testing this spring in South Carolina. The study is designed to:

Identify and understand the critical information needs (CINs) of the American public (with special emphasis on vulnerable/disadvantaged populations).

To provide a comprehensive analysis of access/barriers to CINs in diverse American communities.

To determine what barriers to entry exist in FCC regulated market and to what extent these barriers have a negative impact. [Social Solutions International, Inc., pp. 2-3.]

To put FCC’s Newspeak into layman’s language, the purpose of the FCC study is to uncover information from the daily operations of television and radio broadcasters, newspapers, and the Internet that will reveal the process used to select news stories for presentation, frequency of coverage of critical information needs, media bias, and media responsiveness to underserved populations as perceived by FCC. [Perkins]

The FCC has already identified certain information that it considers as critical information needs of all Americans: health and welfare, education, transportation, economic opportunities, environment, civic information, political information, and emergencies. [Social Solutions International, Inc., p. 61.] Effectively, the FCC will control news content through imposition of content standards consistent with its own definition of CINs. Deviation from the FCC’s CIN standards will be judged as broadcaster/print media bias and therefore subject to FCC regulatory oversight, censure, punishment, and correction.

Although the study has been labeled as voluntary, the Multi-Market Study is merely the door-opener for federal control of the content of broadcast and print news media. Broadcasters must obtain periodic license renewals, and once FCC-defined CIN standards are established, what is to prevent the FCC’s power over broadcaster license renewals from being the hammer used to force broadcasters to accept FCC CIN content requirements? This is somewhat akin to a state or a local school district’s “voluntary” acceptance of Common Core standards. If Common Core standards that are acceptable to the U.S. Department of Education are not chosen, funds will not be forthcoming. [Johnson] Also, the FCC does not have regulatory authority over print media and the Internet at present. However, if FCC-defined bias is found by the study to exist in print media, such perceived bias will be justification for the federal government to expand the FCC’s regulatory reach into newspapers, magazines, other print media, and the Internet.

For those that haven’t been paying attention, this is the liberal formula for controlling American society: create a victim, elevate victim status to being deprived of an imaginary “right” and thus tantamount to discrimination, and finally impose a government solution to fix the discrimination. The perception by the FCC (a perception perhaps encouraged by the FCC’s superiors) is that some Americans are being victimized, particularly the vulnerable and disadvantaged, by not getting the critical information they need from a “biased” media. All Americans have a “right” to critical information to which some are being deprived and therefore are discriminated against. The government’s solution is to eliminate the perceived discrimination found by the FCC study by (1) requiring existing media to disseminate whatever the government determines to be critical information and (2) providing government licensing, support, special privileges, and sources of financing for new media outlets that will supply the critical information needs of the diverse but marginalized-vulnerable-disadvantaged communities presently unserved or under-served by the existing biased media.

Since the FCC’s proposed insertion of monitors into newsrooms caught the attention of many Americans, there has been a firestorm of controversy surrounding the intrusion of big government into the newsrooms of America. Because of the massive negative publicity, the study has been shelved although not rejected at the present time.

Opposition to the FCC study has come from both within and without the media. Opponents have voiced a loud and long defense of First Amendment protections of a free press. But where are the First Amendment champions when religious freedom also guaranteed by the First Amendment is repeatedly trashed by the Obama administration? This administration has made it clear that wherever conflicts occur between religious freedom and its definition of equality, equality will be the victor every time. One need only look at the Affordable Care Act and the advancement of the homosexual agenda as just two of many examples of the trouncing of religious freedom in America.

The FCC’s efforts to control the message through dictating CINs mimics the tactics of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s fictional account of a totalitarian socialist state. However, the FCC has also become the real-life moral and de facto equivalent of Communist political commissars of the twentieth century who were assigned to military units to teach party principles and policies and to insure party loyalty. Non-military commissars were also used to attempt to control public opinion or expression. [Webster]

The FCC’s latest attempt to inject themselves into the newsroom and thereby control the message is just one example of the over-reach of American government into the minutiae of the lives of all Americans. We see the same government intrusions into doctors’ offices and hospitals, school rooms, businesses, local government, property rights and right of contract, religious organizations, and families to name just a few. Government intrusion ranges from serious violation of the Constitution through behavior and speech codes to ridiculous regulations on sugary drink sizes and light bulbs.

Massive government intrusion into the lives of its citizens began in the 1930s under new interpretations of the general welfare clause of the Constitution. Government expansion began in Roosevelt’s New Deal Years of the 1930s and accelerated with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960s. However, the exponential growth during the last five years into the minutest detail of the daily lives of American citizens has become suffocating. Alexis De Tocqueville, in his 1835 Democracy in America, had a prophet’s foresight into America’s 2014 slide into a totalitarian Oceania.

We forget that it is, above all, in the details that we run the risk of enslaving men…Subjection in the minor things of life is obvious every day and is experienced indiscriminately by all citizens. It does not cause them to lose hope but it constantly irks them until they give up the exercise of their will. It gradually blots out their mind and enfeebles their spirit …

The democratic nations which introduced freedom into politics at the same time that they were increasing despotism in the administrative sphere have been led into the strangest paradoxes. Faced with the need to manage small affairs where common sense can be enough, they reckon citizens are incompetent. When it comes to governing the whole state, they give these citizens immense prerogatives. They turn them by degrees into playthings of the ruler or his masters… [emphasis added] [Tocqueville]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

George Orwell, 1984, (New York: Signet Classics, 1950).

Social Solutions International, Inc., “Research Design for the Study of Multi-Market Critical Information Needs,” Federal Communications Commission, (Silver Springs, Maryland: Social Solutions International, Inc., April 2013). http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/research-design-multi-market-study-critical-information-needs (accessed February 22, 2014)

Tony Perkins, “American Pai: FCC Chair Fights off Government Snoops,” Family Research Council, February 21, 2014. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/american-pai-fcc-chair-fights-off-govt-snoops (accessed February 22, 2014);
Ajit Pai, “The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom,” The Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579366903828260732 (accessed February 22, 2014)

Larry G. Johnson, “Common Core Curriculum Standards: The devil is in the details,” culturewarrior.net, November 8, 2013. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2013/11/08/common-core-curriculum-standards-the-devil-is-in-the-details/ (accessed February 26, 2014).

“Commissar,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963), p. 166.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 807-808.

Sickness in the Soul of the American Republic – Part I

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : February 21, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars, Truth, Worldview

The soul of a republic can be viewed as its central cultural vision—that collective worldview that animates and informs all of society. Rooted in their hearts and minds, that vision is also supported and invigorated by its citizens. However, the American Republic is comparable to the demise of high civilizations in ancient times in that certain elements of alienation have entered into America’s central cultural vision which has weakened its citizens’ love for and belief in its compelling purposes. [Reinsch, p. 98.] These elements deny the value and truth of the Republic’s beleaguered central cultural vision and attempt to replace it with multiple centers of cultural vision based on arbitrary and ever-changing inventions of man. In other words, the sickness of the American Republic’s soul is cause by a loss of unity and the denigration of the truths upon which the nation was founded.

Loss of Unity

Culture is a product of the collective consciousness of a group seeing certain felt needs, “…a complex of values polarized by an image or idea.” The very foundation of the cultural concept is unity that presupposes a general commonality of thought and action. As a culture is formed and begins ordering its world to bring the satisfactions for which it was created, directions must be imposed on its members. These directions, limits, and required behaviors radiate through a center of authority with a subtle and pervasive pressure to conform. This pressure may range from cultural peer pressure to moral and legal restraints. Those that do not conform are repelled of necessity. Thus, in any culture there are patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Without such patterns, the culture is unprotected and disintegrates over time. Every culture has a center which commands all things. Weaver calls this center imaginative rather than logical and “…a focus of value, a law of relationships, an inspiring vision…to which the group is oriented.” The intrinsic nature of culture compels that it be exclusive rather than all inclusive. Cultures fail and disintegrate without the power to reject that which does not adhere to its central force. [Weaver, pp. 10-12] When a culture’s complex of values is polarized by an image or idea, we describe this image or idea as its central cultural vision, that is, its collective worldview.

In America, disunity is pandemic in every facet of cultural life including government, education, family, politics, standards of moral behavior, arts, economics and business, and religion. Disunity is evident as the war of words flow from daily newspaper headlines and radio and TV sound bites. This disunity occurs because of the ubiquitous attack on America’s original central cultural vision.

Denigration of Truth

For a culture to survive over the long-term, its central cultural vision must be based on truth. In other words, a culture’s central cultural vision must be informed by and reflect that which is true. In Western civilization, the Christian worldview reflected this truth. Since the nation’s founding, this central cultural vision has been under assault by the humanistic worldview that gained ascendance in Europe during the eighteenth century. The core of the battle revolves around the truth about the nature of man—who he is.

In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. These principles dictate rules of action and applies to animate and inanimate objects. These “laws of nature” must invariably be followed by the universe and the created matter therein. One exception was man, the pinnacle of God’s creation, who was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic, timeless, and are essential elements that provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These absolutes are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. [Johnson, p. 392.] These absolutes were revealed to man by God through His creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians.

The humanistic worldview regarding truth is one of cultural relativism which requires a suspension of judgment since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all truth. For humanists, all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—i.e., truth can be manufactured. [Johnson, pp. 392-393.] Man is merely the end-product of a long evolutionary process that occurred by chance and not the result of some supernatural Creator.

The central cultural vision of colonial Americans and the nation’s Founders was built on the truth of Christian principles. The assault by the opposing forces of humanism was repelled until the mid-twentieth century when they gained critical mass in the various spheres of American life.

For those that adhere to the central cultural vision of the Founders, we will examine in Part II what must be done to defend and reverse the decline of the central cultural vision of the Founders?

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Richard M. Reinsch II, Whitaker Chambers – The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2010), p. 98.

Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 10-12.

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 392-393.

Who owns the language?

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : December 6, 2013
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Category: Archives, Culture Wars, Truth

Sarah Palin spoke to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on November 9th. Her views on the damaging effects of the burgeoning federal debt were well received by the conservative audience, but it provoked considerable hostility in the liberal media and in particular from MSNBC’s Martin Bashir. What especially provoked Mr. Bashir was Palin’s statement that the burgeoning federal debt would eventually result in a form of slavery for American citizens.

Now you know coming up, the other side will offer more of the same, more false promises, more free stuff, and the media, for all too long, will go along with it and all of the deception. What will you counter it with? It’s free stuff! It’s seductive. Why is it marketers use free stuff to bring people in? Free Stuff. It’s such a strong marketing ploy. The tool of free stuff is seductive.

Didn’t you all learn too in Econ 101 that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch? Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that note comes due…and this isn’t racist..try it, try it anyway…this isn’t racist. But it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. Right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master because there is no plan, no plan coming out of Washington, D.C. to stop the incurrence of debt is there? All we’re hearing about is why we need to grow more debt. I believe that if you’re in a hole and you don’t want to be in that hole, quit digging. [Sarah Palin quotes from video excerpts, DesMoinesRegister.com]

Apparently Ms. Palin’s use of the word “slavery” in her analogy was judged to be incorrect as well as unauthorized by the speech police of the liberal establishment. Such was the magnitude of her offense that Mr. Bashir was compelled to respond a week later on his Friday MSNBC show’s “Clear the Air” segment. [Tommy Christopher]

Bashir called Palin America’s “resident dunce” and that her remarks were “scraping the barrel of her long-deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an attempt to sound intelligent about the national debt. Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that she should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history.”

To correct Ms. Palin, Mr. Bashir attempted to contextualize the horror of slavery by quoting from the diary of Thomas Thistlewood, an 18th century British overseer of a Jamaican sugar plantation. Bashir explained that Thistlewood recorded his brutality in a diary which included stories of forcing slaves to defecate and urinate on each other as a form of punishment.

Bashir ended his monologue by saying, “I could go on, but you get the point. When Mrs. Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate.”
After a firestorm of criticism over his remarks, Bashir apologized to Palin and his audience during his show on the following Monday.

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post thought Bashir’s attack on Palin was vicious and unwarranted but agreed with Bashir that the comparison of slavery and debt was inappropriate. Parker wrote, “…slavery merits its own place in America’s memory. To compare it to anything else, especially something as mundane as debt, is wrong on its face. Indentured servitude to China might have been a better choice for Palin…In Palin’s defense, she obviously meant no offense and the attacks in response have been so vicious that the attacks themselves are beyond comparison.” [Kathleen Parker]

What Parker is saying is that some words are so unique or one of a kind that they shouldn’t be used for comparison with other things. She includes words such as “slavery,” “Nazi,” and “Holocaust” in this category of untouchables when devising a simile—a comparison of two essentially unlike things with similar characteristics. (Liberal hypocracy in the application of this practice is abundantly apparent as they frequently affix the label of racism to almost anything which is in opposition to the liberal agenda as defined by the humanistic worldview.)

Well, let’s follow Palin’s analogy to its logical conclusion. Ultimately the free stuff funded by borrowed money must be paid for by someone—either now or in the future. If repayment is not made, the debt is restructured upon negotiated terms or foreclosure follows. When a nation nears default it attempts to renegotiate the debt with its creditors. This generally results in heavy taxation and significant curtailment of services to the citizens of the debtor nation. If a nation defaults on its debts, the population continues its slide into abject poverty over time resulting in life lived at or near subsistence levels.

So, may we not call excessive, onerous, and perhaps unpayable debt a form of slavery? One definition of slavery is that it is “drudgery, toil…submission to a dominating influence.” Ms. Parker would substitute servitude for slavery, but the dictionary lists servitude as slavery, “…the state of subjection to another that constitutes or resembles slavery or serfdom.” [Webster’s]

Liberalism is the precursor for socialism. But the altruistic and lofty goals of liberalism (including the free stuff) become somewhat tarnished when one examines a society under the growing influence of socialism in which freedom gradually erodes slavery. The European Union is a great example in which a number of its members are in severe economic straits (e.g., Greece and Spain) and beholden to the creditor nations. The solvent members of the EU now dictate the rules which have placed extremely painful financial burdens and restraints under which the profligate countries must live. In spite of protests and riots in Greece and other EU debtor nations, it certainly appears that, in the end, debtor members of the EU have submitted to the will of the dominating creditor nations, a situation which we have correctly defined as a form of slavery.

Therefore, it appears Sarah Palin accurately described the potential outcome of our growing national debt as analogous to slavery. But the Bashir-Palin war of words is merely a tempest in the cauldron of the culture wars.

Who owns the language?

Richard Weaver believed that “…a divine element is present in language. The feeling that to have power of language is to have control over things is deeply imbedded in the human mind.” The symbols of language are words, singly and collectively, through which we assign meaning and truth, and it is inherent in man’s nature to seek truth. This is frightening to liberals for in their worldview truth does not exist except as mere perception without fixed reference points. Thus, the liberal must harness, manipulate, and thereafter mold words to end polarity that arises from pursuit of objective truth which allows man to define what is right and wrong. [Weaver, pp. 148, 151, 153.] Hence, liberals attempt to own the language through imposition of politically correct concepts of appropriateness as well as prohibitions through “hate speech” laws as defined by the liberals.

In our modern age humanists have effectively used semantics to neuter words of their meaning in historical and symbolic contexts, that is, words now mean what men want them to mean. By removing the fixities of language (which undermines an understanding of truth), language loses its ability to define and compel. As the meaning of words is divorced from truth, relativism gains supremacy and a culture tends to disintegration without an understanding of eternal truths upon which to orient its self. [Weaver, pp. 151-153, 163.] In the battle of worldviews, certain words have gained power to obscure truth and history through the intrigues of humanist redefinition. Again, Richard Weaver is a master at describing the humanist protocol with regard to corrupting the language.

Just as soon as men begin to point out that the word is one entity and the object it represents is another, there sets in a temptation to do one thing with the word and another or different thing with the object it is supposed to represent; and here begins that relativism which by now is visibly affecting those institutions which depend for their very existence upon our ability to use language as a permanent binder. [emphasis added] [Weaver quoted by Curtis and Thompson, pp. 195-196.]

Liberals (the vast majority of whom hold the humanistic worldview) attack language in its historic and symbolic contexts in an effort to dislodge the generally conservative biblical worldview from America’s central cultural vision. Media shock troops are complicit in the efforts to discredit and immobilize the opposition (those holding the biblical worldview) through the devaluation of language. For those holding the biblical worldview, we must be vigilant in our endeavor to free language from its enslavement by liberals.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Jennifer Jacobs, “Palin compares federal debt to slavery at Iowa dinner,” Video excerpts, DesMoinesRegister.com, November 10, 2013. Quote from video clip. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20131110/NEWS09/311100047/Palin-compares-federal-debt-to-slavery-at-Iowa-dinner?Frontpage (accessed November 22, 2013).

Tommy Christopher, “Martin Bashir Says Someone Should Sh*t in Sarah Palin’s Mouth,” mediaite.com, November 15, 2013. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/martin-bashir-says-someone-should-sht-in-sarah-palins-mouth/ (accessed November 22, 2013).

Kathleen Parker, “Some things shouldn’t be compared,” Tulsa World, November 23, 2013, A-19.

“servitude, slavery,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963), pp. 793, 818.

Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 148, 151-153, 163.

George M. Curtis, III, and James J. Thompson, Jr., eds., The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 195-196.