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.
