{"id":41421,"date":"2017-12-23T04:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41421"},"modified":"2017-12-22T10:32:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T15:32:19","slug":"words-as-weapons-words-as-tools-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/12\/23\/words-as-weapons-words-as-tools-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Words as weapons, words as tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

In City Journal<\/em>, Howard Husock<\/a> looks at the recent media fuss about certain words being “banned” by Trump or the Republicans:<\/p>\n

A political tempest arose last week when the Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a> that the Department of Health and Human Services had banned the use of certain words or phrases \u2014 \u201cvulnerable,\u201d \u201cscience-based,\u201d and \u201centitlements,\u201d among others \u2014 in official budget documents. National Affairs<\/em> editor Yuval Levin debunked<\/a> the story, though, finding instead that bureaucrats concerned about offending Republican budget overseers had, in fact, decided to censor themselves. If so, that suggests that the bureaucrats have been reading their George Orwell, who observed in his classic essay<\/a> “Politics and the English Language” that language is \u201can instrument which we shape for our own purposes\u201d; they are sharp enough to realize that even neutral terms can constitute mini-arguments. Each of the terms in question \u2014 and a great many more \u2014 have been weaponized for use in political conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cVulnerable,\u201d for example, is a substitute for \u201cpoor\u201d or \u201clow-income,\u201d but it usually suggests that the person in question should not be considered in any way responsible for his or her situation, because social conditions that transcend individual action have stacked the deck adversely. \u201cScience-based\u201d is a pithy way to characterize the views of one\u2019s political opponents as ignorant or superstitious. The belief that climate change will prove catastrophic is said to be science-based<\/em>; any view that minimizes the risk constitutes \u201cdenial,\u201d another noun that has become an argument. The widely used \u201centitlement\u201d has also become an argument. The idea that all citizens are \u201centitled\u201d to certain forms of financial support \u2014 checks for those above a certain age, health insurance for those below a certain income \u2014 implies no other way of seeing the situation. Those who would change the way entitlements<\/em> are disbursed, then, are impinging on rights, not programs.<\/p>\n

Other examples abound. \u201cDisadvantaged\u201d describes low-income children \u2014 while implying that other children are advantaged \u2014 and thus that the system is unfair and violates \u201csocial justice,\u201d another loaded term. The \u201chomeless,\u201d by and large, are not living on the street but are often doubled up with friends or family; they don\u2019t have their own home, in other words. But the word-picture painted by \u201chomeless\u201d is more powerful. The Right plays the same game. \u201cDeath tax\u201d as a substitute for \u201cestate tax,\u201d for example, characterizes a debatable policy as an immoral absurdity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In City Journal, Howard Husock looks at the recent media fuss about certain words being “banned” by Trump or the Republicans: A political tempest arose last week when the Washington Post reported that the Department of Health and Human Services had banned the use of certain words or phrases \u2014 \u201cvulnerable,\u201d \u201cscience-based,\u201d and \u201centitlements,\u201d among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,84,28,53,13],"tags":[354,400,351],"class_list":["post-41421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-georgeorwell","tag-language","tag-politicalcorrectness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aM5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41422,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41421\/revisions\/41422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}