pudge's Journal: Language

Author Geoffrey Nunberg was on Colbert tonight saying that the right abuses language in order to control public debate.

One example he gave was "support the troops." "There was a time when 'support the troops' meant go out and have scrap drives, turn in your old tires, and so on, now it just means ... shopping, buying a Hummer." Except that the scrap drives of the 40s were mostly meaningless gestures. So he's not really up on his history.

He brought up a bunch of epithets hurled by the right at the left, like saying liberals are "Hollywood-loving" and "Volvo-driving." He, mostly properly, says those labels are largely inaccurate and meaningless anyway, and serve only to bias thinking instead of evaluating arguments. Of course, he neglects the fact that the left does the exact same thing to the Fox News-loving, freedom-hating, moralist, gun-toting, environment-hating right.

He even says that this "bogus cultural divide" is being created by "the right." Funny, wasn't it the left after the 2004 election who made a huge deal out of how culturally divided the urban centers are from the rest of the country, ridiculing those in the South and Midwest for being backward, stupid, ignorant, largely in cultural terms? "The right" is creating this divide? Pull the other one.

He explains this discrepancy in emphasis by saying the right has been more successful in controlling the debate through language: "the right has moved the center of gravity of the language to the right." But he's got it backward: it's been the left that's controlled the debate through language, and it's done it so successfully we don't even recognize it.

Colbert brough up the "death tax," and Nunberg noted how this supposed rebranding of the "estate tax" is a great example of what he is talking about (even though calling it an "estate tax" is itself a liberal rebranding of "inheritance tax"). But it's an even better example of how effective the left has been, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out recently in National Review.

A hundred years ago, some people looked around and decided that government should be the cure for whatever ills we have. Bad economy, no job, no job skills, no health care, whatever you lack, government will provide. And government must therefore control and manage our resources in order to provide these things.

Conservatives today largely reject this notion, but it has become so ingrained in our national culture that we can't avoid speaking in these terms. So, for example, the debate over sex education is not whether we should have sex education in government schools, but exactly how the government should teach sex to our kids.

Similarly, with the estate tax, most conservatives won't argue in terms of the estate tax simply being confiscatory and unjust, but instead will argue about how it harms the economy, or is an inefficient tax, and how there are better and more effective taxes. Instead of arguing that government should not engage in economic and social micromanagement of the country, they use the liberal language of progressivism that assumes government should do these things, and argue that there are better ways to accomplish those liberal goals.

And this is probably one of the reasons why some on the right feel the need to resort to such transparent tactics as name-calling: because they are so frustrated by the inability to say what they really want to say, that they lash out in other ways. So since I can't say that the federal government should not be involved in education - when I say that, people think I am crazy -- I call you a Northeastern latte-drinking liberal who only wants to control our children and spit out carbon-copy citizens who will think whatever President Mao wants them to think. Or something.

Language is used to control thought on both sides. But I can't look out and see that the right's activities in this area are either more pervasive or more successful. And frankly, I think the attempt to paint the right in this way is Nunberg's attempt to do what he chastises: by attacking (and singling out for blame) the right's use of language, he is attempting to undercut their arguments, using the classic (and classically transparent) red herring fallacy. Oops.

It's the psychological power of preemption

[Bill Dog]

If I engage in a particular "below the radar" tactic for long that thwarts my opponents and fools the unwashed masses, after a time I'll think I've played that trick so many times, my opponents are bound to figure out what exactly it is I'm doing, and then explain it to the masses and accuse me of doing it, so I'll preempt that by being first, and accusing my opponents of the very thing that is sneaky that I'm doing. Then when my opponents point out what I've been doing, the masses have already heard that b

Re:

[Timex]

That way, I'm know I'm a bastard, my opponents know I'm a bastard, but everyone else thinks I'm on the up-and-up!

Everyone knows that an honest bastard is better than a bastard that's just out to start trouble.

Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100

...And what does this mean?

Re:

[pudge]

Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100

...And what does this mean?

132.

Re:

[Timex]

well, that would assume that it's binary. Of course, that THEN begs the question, what is "132" supposed to mean to zealots and haters?

I'm kind of thrown by the two groupings of five positions...

It would have been funny, for example, if it was something like "0100 1101 0110 0101"... I don't get the one from the sig...

Maybe I'm just being thick. <shrug>

Re:

[Bill Dog]

No, I'm not saying that I am a bastard, or that I intentionally try to fool people, I was just putting myself in the political scammer type's shoes and imagining what s/he must be thinking.

On my sig, the two groupings of five digits each is relevant. There's something in meatspace that are also referred to as digits, and that also occur in two sets of five. A likely representation of that binary on those digits is my message to zealots and haters, of which there's a veritable plethora on Slashdot.

Re:

[Timex]

On my sig, the two groupings of five digits each is relevant. There's something in meatspace that are also referred to as digits, and that also occur in two sets of five...

You, sir, are brilliant.

Thanks for clearing that up. :)

You must've missed

[buffer-overflowed]

where he said the left does this as well, we're just less *effective* at it.

Re:

[pudge]

No, I saw that, which is why I pointed out the fact that, on the contrary, the left has been far more effective, which is why most debates about public policy today take place on progressive terms. Perhaps I should have been more explicit that he did mention it, but only in passing, for about two seconds, and he brought up not a single example, and indeed, he explicitly laid the entire blame for the "cultural divide" at the feet of "the right."

I think I found his handle.

[GMontag]

I believe that author could be Com2Kid [slashdot.org]. He visited my journal recently [slashdot.org].

Preemptive Nuances

[Dark Coder]

With the four basic corners of political/ideological stances in mind, I'd say you all guys are brainwashing one another, one way or another.

I'd opt to stay centrist! (If I could.)

Re:

[pudge]

Every "side" does it, including centrists. And almost everyONE does it, to some degree, too. Like, as I said, this guy saying he does not support the "death tax," but the "estate tax," instead of "inheritance tax." For years it was called "inheritance tax," but the left realized that this makes it sound too universal, so they started using the word "estate" to make it sound like only the ultrawealthy get hit.

The point I was making is that the left isn't any less successful than the right (again, I think

Perogative Thinking?

[Dark Coder]

Does this mean that given such wide diversity of ideological cultures (assuming they stay within Western Civilization tenets) are good for a two-party (such as America) system?

Or is a two-party system good for supporting such wide diversity?

To seems to me, that goes hand-in-hand, despite voter apathy. I look at Europe's multiparty. No one can say with authority that 2-party or multi-party system is better. History isn't a reliable guide to this.

I recall such a research paper discussing tail-end era of Ro

Thanks

[mwlewis]

I can't say how many times I've thought almost exactly the same thing. It never ceases to amaze me how important it is to be able to define the terms of the debate. I think it may be hard to 'objectively' determine who does this more, but I can say that it's always felt like the left has been more successful.