Maintaining Control of the Language of the Dialog

[Bare_Truth]

We have seen how various advocacy groups (mostly on the left) try to win the dialog of what they promote by skewing the meaning of words or changing the words that are used in the dialog.

Homosexuals
-- change their classification to "Gay" and
-- insist that any committed domestic relationship is a "Marriage"
Pro abortionists
-- change their classification to "Pro Choice" and
-- dehumanize a baby in the womb by using the Latin term "Fetus" or "developing tissue"
etc. etc.

Those of the religious bent are failing at this. and the humanists/athiests/leftists etc are winning.

We hear about the
--"freedom of religion',
--"separation of church and state", and
-- "freedom of worship."
But none of those are guaranteed to us in the constitution!

If you read the constitution and the first amendment in particular what you will read in the very first line is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ......

It needs to be noted that this does not guarantee freedom of religion but rather it says that by law the government is not to interfere in the "free exercise of it". It does not say we have the freedom of worship but rather the "free exercise of religion".

The anti religious forces rather like the term "freedom of worship" because they interpret it in the sense that if we want to go off into some private place and have a worship service, that we are allowed to do that. But should we choose to exercise our right to pray when we are in a public place they get rather uppity about that , or if we wear garb or jewelery relevant to our religious exercise they have a problem with that. Under their "freedom of religion mantra" they say we can believe anything we want inside our pointy little heads, we just cannot do anything about it. But DOING is what EXERCISE is all about. So long as what we DO does not harm you or anyone else you have a right to feel offended if you like but you do not have a right to stop us by using the law against us. So if your religious PRACTICE says you must not assist in the taking of the life of anyone who is innocent, then that is protected! The Supreme Court appears to have gotten the Hobby Lobby case right, because it interfere's with our free exercise of religion. Likewise if a Jewish baker chooses not to use his talents to make Swastikas on an order of cupcakes that is his right just like it is a Christian's right not to make a Homosexual wedding cake. The customer is also free and can take his business elsewhere, that is simply a service (exercise) that violates the baker's religious belief .

The point, I suggest, is that every time you can, when anyone uses the term freedom of "Religion" or "Worship" we should politely correct them by pointing out that it is "Free Exercise of Religion that we are guaranteed, and that the 1st amendment and Supreme court rulings on the application of this constitutional right throughout the country to all persons.

If we do not do this, we are likely to lose the dialog and how subsequent laws are worded and interpreted.

[Petros]

A. "Words mean what Big Brother says they mean" is not fiction.

B. The structure of language, including both grammatical structure and semantic structure, is fluid, the product of negotiation as we seek messages that work and get us our cup of coffe [hats off for Mr. W]. Ergo, HOW we talk is a function of WITH WHOM we talk.

C. Each year the ratio of personal interaction to media-mediated communication decreases. Ergo, control of the media is the principal component of control of the language.

D. Bad money drives out good, and soime older tribesmen have no one left with whom they can communicate.

D. Some years back there was a nice case study. The government of an African nation, as part of a drive to expand and purify and update the language, drew up a list of words for use in the automotive repair industry. The investigator checked it out, As this was the project of a not very sophisticated government, the new words sat in the government publication; possibly penetrated to a ferw not very well attended courses. A few foreign auto manufacturers tried to use thew new words in their manuals [which few read]. Meanwhile, the people actually fixing cars used theior own words, blithely unaware of the government list, and using words some of which would be abhorrent to the authorities.

E. Those who would be our masters are not so unsophisticated. They have been the USSR and the Third Reich and the WPA, they have the schools and the media.

F. It takes two to negotiate. One can stand and perhaps in time, adjust the language to suit one's own preferences. If you doubt it, check out such churchy usages as "forgive OF sins".

G. ’When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ” it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make a word mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be the master – that’s all.”

[bn2bnude]

We have seen how various advocacy groups (mostly on the left) try to win the dialog of what they promote by skewing the meaning of words or changing the words that are used in the dialog.

I know you are addressing the changes in interpretation of the United States first amendment, particularly addressing "liberals". I would argue that if you look closely, it's done across the board in equal proportions. As with the log/speck "principle" talked about in Matthew 7:5, we tend not to see our own offenses.

[Bare_Truth]

..... I know you are addressing the changes in interpretation of the United States first amendment, particularly addressing "liberals". I would argue that if you look closely, it's done across the board in equal proportions. As with the log/speck "principle" talked about in Matthew 7:5, we tend not to see our own offenses.

I will agree that it might be done across the board by all parties, however I would like to see some evidence that it is done in equal proportions. I believe however that we ought not to count the situations when it is done as a tit for tat reaction. So when Anti and Pro abortion forces squared off, it was the pro abortionists who came up with "pro choice", selecting a good thing to be for, and make the Anti abortionists seem negative. Then tit for tat, the anti abortionists stopped using that term and came up with "Pro Life" as a term for themselves.

However when looking at liberal versus conservatives, as those terms are used to day it is the liberals who are seeking all sorts of change while the conservatives charge that the liberals are throwing out the baby with the bath water, and that we ought to seek more sedate and careful change. Manipulating the dialog is a powerful tool of bringing about change and dodging issues with clever wording changes. Hence I think it is the "liberals" of today who are more prone to use this trick of propaganda.

That being said, I am open to examples and delving into the balance to see if "conservatives" INITIATE as much of this as the "liberals" do. But given the eagerness to launch into radical change, I think the outcome will favor my view point.

[Petros]

It is not the ideology. An intelligent, informed, thoughtful, ethical, principled, spiritual person may negotiate definitons with me and discuss respectfuilly, and we may come out disagreeing on every point of discuission.

A bigotted power-grabbing self-interested charlatan [and no gentleman] will have no interest in nor time for my arguments, but may seize on them and claim them [or some distortion of them] as hid position.

At this point in time a plurality of the demagogs [intentional misspelling for this ingroup] have slid to the end of the seesaw where the grossly mislabelled liberals hang out.

[Bare_Truth]

....... the grossly mislabelled liberals ........

True, how very very true.

I read an article once, which I am now unable to find that traces the demise of the old style liberals and the advent of the present style liberals to the late 1800,s. That author's assertion was that the original liberals sought liberty for humankind in keeping the government and society in general at bay so that the variety of individuals might have as much liberty as possible, as contrasted by the new style liberals who sought to use government to liberate the individual from the vicissitudes of life, largely through the political instrument of socialism. The organic problem of socialism being that it tends toward, at first enticed, and later enforced uniformity. Which end results in a mundane sameness promulgated or enforced by an entrenched and unimaginative hierarchy.

In trying to distill what is the fundamental difference between so called liberals and conservatives, I think that the real difference is one of the nature of human society and to what degree the restraints upon the excesses and consequences of an individual's innovation are imposed before or after the occurrence of the innovation. i.e. If I have an idea, can I just go ahead and do it or do I have to get some bureaucrats, or apparatchik's permission. Or looking at another facet,
-- do we put laws in place to protect others from the excesses/disruptions of the one.
or
-- do we put "persons" in power who make such decisions as to what others can do based on how the "persons" perceive the outcome to be.
Perhaps we need to see those not as alternatives, but rather as poles at the opposite ends of a spectrum.

AH, but I drift off of the original intent of this strip. Which was really about the ethical use of language during the discourse of bringing about change. The hidden agenda carried out by the unilateral
-- wresting of the meaning of words
or
-- the substitution of words of other meaning
into some sort of "newspeak", is a political and ethical evil.

If we fail to agree on the meaning of the terms of the dialog we end up talking past each other and that is no way to resolve differences.

[jochanaan]

Well, I would argue that the US military are masters at changing the language to suit their public-relations purpose. "Collateral damage," "nation-building," "limited engagement"... do I need to cite more examples?

[Bare_Truth]

....."Collateral damage," "nation-building," "limited engagement"... do I need to cite more examples?

But are those terms of manipulative attempt or are they simply military jargon for the situations that they deal with?

For instance I do not see any particular sugar coating in the term "collateral damage". It is clearly talking about damage in a general sense. It may be destruction of homes, or civilian deaths, or production of a famine by the disruption of the transportation system, but they have still called it damage. I have heard them use more specific terms when it is relevant, such as "loss of civilian lives". It is not as if they were calling it "diminution of combatant social support" or some such flowery term! They have called it damage and it is damage. A reasonable parallel in the abortion issue would be if the pro-abortionists referred to their support of "opting for induced fetal death" instead of using "pro choice" as they do.

Likewise, the term "nation building" is the assembling of a political structure to replace the regime that caused the problem to which the military action was chosen as a corrective. I do not think that anyone fails to see that this is a substitute political system for the existing one. I perceive it as an admission that the military action has crippled or destroyed the existing political system and a responsibility is being accepted to put something else in place. And I doubt that anyone expects it to be a clone of the former regime. But also even if it looks more like what we have, that should be no surprise, what else would we know how to build. Nation building virtually bespeaks regime overthrow and change. But at least the term "nation building" is recognizing the barbarity of just leaving total devastation behind. (allowing of course the destruction of rural village life via the use of agent orange and resettlement to controlled towns and cities In Vietnam was atrocious as was the slaughter of non communist village leaders by the Vietcong who were following the recipe in Mao tse Dong's book on guerilla warfare was equally atrocious.)

My concern is the subversion of the political process by obfuscation and hidden agendas, as opposed to plain and open dealing.

[bn2bnude]

....."Collateral damage," "nation-building," "limited engagement"... do I need to cite more examples?

But are those terms of manipulative attempt or are they simply military jargon for the situations that they deal with?

For instance I do not see any particular sugar coating in the term "collateral damage". It is clearly talking about damage in a general sense. It may be destruction of homes, or civilian deaths, or production of a famine by the disruption of the transportation system, but they have still called it damage. I have heard them use more specific terms when it is relevant, such as "loss of civilian lives". It is not as if they were calling it "diminution of combatant social support" or some such flowery term! They have called it damage and it is damage. A reasonable parallel in the abortion issue would be if the pro-abortionists referred to their support of "opting for induced fetal death" instead of using "pro choice" as they do.

Likewise, the term "nation building" is the assembling of a political structure to replace the regime that caused the problem to which the military action was chosen as a corrective. I do not think that anyone fails to see that this is a substitute political system for the existing one. I perceive it as an admission that the military action has crippled or destroyed the existing political system and a responsibility is being accepted to put something else in place. And I doubt that anyone expects it to be a clone of the former regime. But also even if it looks more like what we have, that should be no surprise, what else would we know how to build. Nation building virtually bespeaks regime overthrow and change. But at least the term "nation building" is recognizing the barbarity of just leaving total devastation behind. (allowing of course the destruction of rural village life via the use of agent orange and resettlement to controlled towns and cities In Vietnam was atrocious as was the slaughter of non communist village leaders by the Vietcong who were following the recipe in Mao tse Dong's book on guerilla warfare was equally atrocious.)

My concern is the subversion of the political process by obfuscation and hidden agendas, as opposed to plain and open dealing.

Each one of those terms... "Collateral damage," "nation-building," "limited engagement"... depersonalize the real damage caused... That depersonalization is used to allow the fighters the ability to ignore (seemingly?) the reality of what they are doing. To me that is certainly "sugar coating". Maybe the difference, then, is our perspective when we hear them. The same can be said for those "liberals" you mention in the OP.

[Bare_Truth]

....

.....
My concern is the subversion of the political process by obfuscation and hidden agendas, as opposed to plain and open dealing.

Each one of those terms... "Collateral damage," "nation-building," "limited engagement"... depersonalize the real damage caused... That depersonalization is used to allow the fighters the ability to ignore (seemingly?) the reality of what they are doing. To me that is certainly "sugar coating". Maybe the difference, then, is our perspective when we hear them. The same can be said for those "liberals" you mention in the OP.

The military hardly needs those words for dealing with their own troops, what with the complete control and boot camp brain washing capacity they already have.

The primary use of those words is with the public via the news media. I would say that very few people are likely confused by what they really mean. This is a very very different thing from calling an ongoing homosexual activity a marriage, given the long standing definition of what a marriage really is and always has been, it is likewise if we compare the army's words to things like "choice" vs "abortion" and "lump of flesh" versus "baby".

The rationale that came out of the homosexual marriage ruling of the supreme court even said that it was not equal protection under the law to make one couple's marriage less than some other couple's marriage. The supreme court justice that wrote that had fallen into the trap (or was trying to draw the rest of us into it) that the issue was the comparison of two marriages. But the homosexual relationship was not a marriage by the long standing definition of a marriage [1]


[1]
to wit:
From my copy of the Webster's New World Dictionary (c) 1951, 1952 (I would have been 7 when that was printed)

marriage refers to the state of, or the relation between, a man and a woman who have become husband and wife, or the ceremony marking this union

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

That would make it long standing of a few thousand years even if you only count from when Moses recorded it in the text of Genesis

[Petros]

Absent a vigorous press establishment [including such pseudomedia as Twitter] and the facade of ritual assent of the governed, neither governors nor generals have ever felt it necessary to make nice. Euphemism on the scale we see it today is highly artificial. we hear in Pinafore, Stick closer to your desk and never go to sea. Since the war to end all normal wars, an increasing proportion of the battle has been to keep people reasonably misinformed.

[bn2bnude]

.....
My concern is the subversion of the political process by obfuscation and hidden agendas, as opposed to plain and open dealing.

Each one of those terms... "Collateral damage," "nation-building," "limited engagement"... depersonalize the real damage caused... That depersonalization is used to allow the fighters the ability to ignore (seemingly?) the reality of what they are doing. To me that is certainly "sugar coating". Maybe the difference, then, is our perspective when we hear them. The same can be said for those "liberals" you mention in the OP.

The military hardly needs those words for dealing with their own troops, what with the complete control and boot camp brain washing capacity they already have.

It seems you've proved my point... Both sides (liberal and conservative) do the "evil deed" of obfuscation but we only care about those we think are "evil".

[Bare_Truth]

...It seems you've proved my point... Both sides (liberal and conservative) do the "evil deed" of obfuscation but we only care about those we think are "evil".

Pardon me if I seem to be struggling with seeing what in my last post proves your point. Do you think that I am carte blanch in approving the use of the military? Not so! And with respect to the use of the noted terms by the military. There is simply no dialog being conducted that I see. I do see the military using the technical jargon of their trade, But I see them using, for instance, the term "Collateral Damage" as recognition of an undesirable side effect of their actions and a thing to be minimized consistent with carrying out their mission. So I hardly see that I have proved any point for you.

Getting back to the theme and objective of the original post:
As persons of faith who wish the benefits of living without religious oppression and willingly extend that to those of other religions, we need to be very sensitive to the fact that the U.S. Constitution, first amendment right pertaining to religion, is a recognition of an existing right to FREE EXERCISE of religion and not just something that we do in our head.

Forbidding Roman Catholic Nun's and Priests to wear their traditional garb in public must not be allowed as done in some countries.
Forbidding Muslim women the right to wear a head scarf in public places must not be allowed
Forbidding Wiccan priests and priestesses the right to dance about a fire under a full moon while naked must not be allowed.
Failure to support "reasonable accommodation" in the workplace for observance of Religious Holy days, Ramadan, Christmas, Kwanza, Yom Kippur, Sabbath, etc. must not be allowed.
Forcing religiously prohibited behavior on a person of faith such as:
-- Swearing on the Bible or by God
-- Eating of pork
-- Laboring on the Sabbath
-- Participating in abortions as a condition of medical employment or operating a business.
-- Supporting homosexual practices/celebrations
-- requiring voting in elections
-- and such like
Must not be done.

In various jurisdictions the above religious "exercises" actions have been violated, but the term "free exercise" in the first amendment provides a degree of protection; absolute in some cases, with limited restriction in others.

As for limited protections, religions must at the same time accommodate the legitimate concerns of the state, For instance:
-- Virginia has a law of long standing (over 100 yrs old, I think) that a person may not go in disguise in public with their face obscured.
-- Muslims who go in public need to accommodate this, perhaps with some other sort of positive identification while wearing a burka if their exercise of their religion requires it.
-- The Amish are required to adequately light their buggies when operating them on the road at night. Though I think requiring them to use electricity to do so is not right.
-- Also the Amish are allowed to maintain their own school system which has a different curriculum from the public schools but some matters of the curriculum are required by the state to meet its legitimate concerns that children be properly educated.

My thesis is that those who oppose religion, are often well aware of what "free exercise" really means and try to skew the dialog by substituting "freedom of worship" or "freedom of religion" for the more powerful term "free exercise". We must not let them get away with this ruse! Even if they do it innocently and accidentally by confusing the difference in their own minds.

.

[bn2bnude]

...It seems you've proved my point... Both sides (liberal and conservative) do the "evil deed" of obfuscation but we only care about those we think are "evil".

Pardon me if I seem to be struggling with seeing what in my last post proves your point. Do you think that I am carte blanch in approving the use of the military? Not so! And with respect to the use of the noted terms by the military. There is simply no dialog being conducted that I see. I do see the military using the technical jargon of their trade, But I see them using, for instance, the term "Collateral Damage" as recognition of an undesirable side effect of their actions and a thing to be minimized consistent with carrying out their mission. So I hardly see that I have proved any point for you.

To me, collateral damage is more than an undesirable side-effect, it is the accidental destruction of someone's property at the minimum or more the loss of human life.

Limited Engagement? much more a "nice" term but still points to lives that are potentially lost.

Nation-building? Forcing our will on some other set of people is imperialism (or can be interpreted as such).

Rather than making the topic something generic and trying to guide it, maybe it should be changed.

[Bare_Truth]

Rather than making the topic something generic and trying to guide it, maybe it should be changed.

Well I thought that is what I was trying to do with the reference to the title and my header about getting back to the issue of the originating post.

Perhaps you could elaborate on what you had in mind. My comments about the generic mechanism used were intended to illuminate the issue of free exercise of religion and the either deliberate or careless use of language which endangers the existence of true freedom in religious exercise.