Liberal language and the trashing of truth

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.” Throughout the ages language has been the means of achieving order in culture. Knowledge of truth comes through the word which provides solidity in the “shifting world of appearances.”

However, for humanist-liberal-progressivists, the shifting world of appearances is more important and useful than objective truth which they deem to be a fiction. Humanist writer-philosopher Paul Kurtz summarized this sentiment when he wrote that no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue and that “…truth is often the product of the free give and take of conflicting opinions.” Therefore, truth is mere perception, shackled to time, and cannot be objective or eternal. But how is the humanist-liberal-progressive to highjack the power of language and cause truth to be relegated to a mere consensus of opinion?

The Obama administration has provided an excellent example in recent weeks. There has been much ado in the news about the administration’s “talking points” regarding the 9-11-2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. The attack which killed the ambassador and three other Americans threatened to be a major embarrassment to the administration only six weeks before the 2012 presidential election. Having portrayed Al-Qaeda beaten, it was very inconvenient to be proven wrong by such an incident. Even more tragic was the administration’s inexcusable negligence in rescuing the besieged Americans at the embassy. Therefore, through the administration’s talking points, blame was redirected toward an obscure anti-Islamic film circulating on the Internet rather than the truth that the orchestrated attack was the result of Al-Qaeda linked terrorists which was known immediately after the attack. Knowing the truth, the administration’s talking points were an effort to cover up the real source and reason for the attack. An extensive account can be found on the Weekly Standard’s website.

There were several players in the tangled affair of the Benghazi talking points including the White House, Department of State, CIA, National Security Council, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Through three iterations of the talking points, the cause of the Benghazi tragedy moved from “Islamic extremists with ties to Al-Qaeda” to an obscure YouTube video critical of Islam and from “terrorist attack” to “demonstration.” For the Obama administration, the reality (truth) of what happened at Benghazi was ignored and replaced by the free give and take of conflicting opinions, that is, a manufactured truth through consensus.

Writing about the larger issue of the decline of the American language, Paul Greenberg succinctly captured the essence of the Benghazi talking points in a recent column.

They [modern political operatives] know that the way to win an election is to muffle unpleasant truths and soften hard principles. Besides, clarity is hard work. It’s so much easier to fuzz the message and so write around any inconvenient facts that may disrupt the smooth flow of currently fashionable patter.

In modern American politics dominated by the humanistic worldview, talking points have supplanted truth. But the Obama administration’s Benghazi obfuscation is merely a minor tempest compared to the larger assault on language and ultimately truth.

In the battle of worldviews, certain words have gained power to obscure truth and history through the machinations of humanist redefinition. Modern politicians who obscure both truth and history have borrowed a page from V. I. Lenin, founder of the Communist party and leader of the Russian Revolution.

We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth. We can and must write in the language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, scorn, and the like, toward those who disagree with us.

This is the technique or protocol of the humanist-liberal-progressive: Deny the existence of objective, eternal truth; redefine key concepts such as truth, freedom, justice, and equality; and revise history to promote the belief that America was created as a secular nation and thereby drive Christianity from the public square. Because of what humanist-liberal-progressives have sown, Americans who disagree with them are targets of hate, revulsion, and scorn. Thus, we have identified differing views as to the meaning of truth as the origin of the vast chasm separating the humanist and Christian combatants in the war for supremacy in the central cultural vision of America.

Weaver called words the storehouse of our memory. 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.

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. 191-192.

Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 148, 158, 163.

Stefan F. Hayes, “The Benghazi Talking Points,” The Weekly Standard, Vol. 18, No. 33, (May 13, 2013). On-line source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-talking-points_720543.html?page=3 (accessed June 11, 2013).

Paul Greenberg, “Don’t give up on the American language,” Tulsa World, (June 9, 2013), G-3; On-line source: Paul Greenberg, “The state of the language,” JewishWorldReview.com, (June 5, 2013). http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg060513.php3#.UbdQQpyi1qs (accessed June 9, 2013).