Tom Riggins: Corrupted English

John Locke said “Language is the great bond that holds society together.” Today we are witnessing a corruption of our language, effectively destroying that bond. There are several reasons for this, but all of them have a common goal, “to darken truth and unsettle people’s rights,” as Locke put it.

Why do some people corrupt words? The concern is with those of evil intentions who wish to infringe on people’s rights. As espoused in Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” they will employ any means to gain their end, such as obscurantism, obfuscation, deception, and falsification.

Techniques of corrupting language, according to Locke, are to abuse words by either applying old words to new and unusual significations, introducing new and ambiguous terms without defining either, or else putting words together to obscure their ordinary meaning. Here are some examples.

The word “freedom” has been perverted. It once meant to be free from political oppression. Now it means freedom from wants and needs like hunger, unemployment, sickness, illiteracy, old-age worries, and the like. The question to ask here is, at whose expense? Then it becomes obvious that these new freedoms are at someone’s expense, and are not really freedoms, but irresponsible promises by government.

An extension of this is “human rights.” We hear this phrase constantly, and yet, what does it mean? Do we hear anything about the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness in connection with it? We get the feeling that somehow it is an empty phrase, devoid of any worthy meaning. Or more pervasively, freedom (gotcha) from the aforementioned wants and needs. Since when is free health care a human right?

Equality is a foundational concept in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Equity has been promoted as being the same but it is not. This is important, because the two are distinctly different and have different outcomes. Equality is essentially giving people the same resources or opportunities. What is done with those is up to the individual. Equity means to allocate resources and opportunities in a manner that brings about an equal outcome. That sounds suspiciously like socialism. In fact, equity is a major part of Critical Race Theory. If you see the words diversity, equity, and inclusion used together, look out. You are encountering Critical Race Theory.

An example of renaming something to make it more acceptable is liberal versus progressive. The word “progressive” by its dictionary definition implies moving forward or favoring new ideas. It is much more friendly-sounding than “liberal” which is defined in part as not being bound by authoritarianism or tradition.

A term whose meaning has been changed by government and media is herd immunity. In my days as an animal science student herd immunity was defined as “The resistance to invasion and spread of an infectious agent in a group or community, based on the resistance to infection of a high proportion of individual members of the group; resistance is a product of the number susceptible and the probability that susceptibles will come into contact with an infected person.” That means that immunity is obtained by passing the disease and its resultant immunity through close contact with others. This applies to humans and animals.

However, herd immunity has been changed by the CDC and the media to imply that it can only be obtained through vaccination. A quick online search reveals that nearly every definition at least includes vaccination. That is counter to the traditional medical definition.

You have often heard “My body, my choice.” In other words, pro-choice. For some reason this concept is acceptable for abortions but not for choice as to whether to receive the COVID vaccine. This is typical liberal (excuse me, I mean progressive) hypocrisy. Do as we say or else.

Investment is another word perverted by government. It replaces the word “spend” as if somehow the government, be it state or federal, can somehow extort money from the taxpayer then spend it in a responsible manner that offers a return. This after taking a healthy slice for themselves and their cronies. It is still spending but investment sounds better to the uneducated rubes government panders to.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that is coming under attack as a racist holiday. First, Columbus was a racist for discovering the country because he supposedly enslaved the indigenous people, even though they regularly enslaved each other. Then white people settled the country. Thanksgiving gives thank to those natives who helped settlers survive. How is that racist? Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving.