GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Don Feder
08/03/2011
This is the fourth installment in a series on liberal language-manipulation – the ways in which the left’s terminology comes loaded with hidden assumptions. If you even tacitly accept these catch phrases, you’ve lost the debate before it starts.
For instance, the expression “same-sex marriage” is based on the preposterous notion that “marriage” (as shaped by biology and theology) is even remotely possible between two people of the same gender. Accept the assumption, and you are reduced to fighting on the fringes. (Example: Is it good for children?)
Since the left controls most of society’s idea-generators – the mass media, academia, public education, book publishing – it has all of the tools it needs to condition the public consciousness to assimilate certain ideas.
It’s hoped this series will help to break the spell cast by liberal necromancers. Continuing our long march into the murky terrain of leftist clichés:
Christian Right (an expression much preferred to Christian conservatives, as it sounds more ominous) – Since evangelicals became a political force in the late 1970s, the left has been squawking about a coming theocracy – that sinister Testament-thumpers would shred the Constitution, end democracy and rule with a Bible in one hand and a mace in the other. As the religious right includes Catholics, Mormons and Orthodox Jews, as well as evangelicals, the left never explains exactly how this theocracy would work. Is the blueprint the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon or the Torah? Of necessity, the fear-mongering must be vague.
Like Muslims seeking a global caliphate, the Christian right is also prepared to climb to power over a mound of corpses, the left warns. When a Norwegian nutcase blew up a building in Oslo and shot up a socialist youth camp, the left believed it had found an honest-to-goodness-real-live Christian terrorist, so it could continue to pretend that there’s nothing unique about Islam that encourages mass murder. Yet, according to his 1,500-page manifesto, Anders Breivik, the man arrested for the crimes, believes it's possible to be a “Christian-atheist” and calls himself a follower of Darwin – just like every other conservative Christian I’ve never met.
Lone wolves do not a movement make. Unlike the crazy imams, rabid ayatollahs, terror-sponsoring states and jihadist groups with tentacles that encircle the globe, Breivik has no support base. Where is the Christian equivalent of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Moslem Brotherhood, Ahmadinejad, Iran, Syria, etc.? Onward Christian-atheist soldiers marching on socialist youth camps to protest Muslim immigration to Europe?
The agenda of the religious right is truly terrifying. It would end abortion, preserve marriage and allow religious symbolism in public places. If this constitutes a theocracy, then that’s what we had back in 1962, when John F. Kennedy was president. This was the status quo antebellum – before the left launched the culture war in the late ‘60s. Pretty scary, huh?
Moderate Republicans – the only kind the left likes. You Republicans, why can’t you be more like John McCain, the media endlessly lecture us? (In “My Fair Lady,” Professor Henry Higgins sang “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” For the establishment, it’s, “Why can’t a Republican be more like a Democrat?”) The left calls them “moderates.” We know and loath them as RINOS (Republicans In Name Only). For many RINOS, their Republican identity is genetic. They are bluebloods who consider the GOP their patrimony, and are incensed by the takeover of their club by Christians, Constitutionalists, taxpayers, right-to-lifers and other rabble.
Moderately conservative on fiscal concerns, they are Democrat-clones on social issues – thus former N.J. Governor Christine Todd Whitman and current U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, the RINO twins from Maine. Often, after it’s no longer advantageous to feign Republicanism, so-called moderates gravitate to their true home, like former New York Mayor John Lindsay and former Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker.
Besides helping to close the ideological gap between the parties, there’s another reason the liberal media love “moderate” Republicans (moderately pro-free market, moderately limited government, occasionally willing to uphold the Constitution) – they’re born losers. Witness Gerald Ford in 1976, Bush ’41 in 1992 (by which time he’d shed his Reganite coloration), Dole in 1996 and McCain in 2008. Republican moderates who offer, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, an echo – not a choice, provide a fuzzy contrast to their Democratic opponents, are as exciting as Mitt Romney on valium and end up alienating the GOP base.
There is no moderate/conservative split at the grassroots. From 2002 to 2011, self-identified Republicans who call themselves conservative increased ten percentage points, from 62% to 72%. At the same time, Republicans who said they were “moderate” fell from one in three to fewer than one in four.
The expression “moderate Republican” implies that real Republicans are extremists. If a moderate Republican supports raising the debt limit with little or nothing in return (to avert the calamity of a government shutdown), then Republicans who demand real spending cuts must be zealots.
Overpopulation – Here’s a term that defies definition. Ask the proponents of population control how many people is too many and they’ll respond that they can’t say exactly, but they just know the earth has an excess of Homo sapiens.
In 1792, when he wrote “An Essay on the Principal of Population,” and the world held an estimated 970 million people, Thomas Malthus thought there were too many of us and further population growth would cause mass starvation in Europe. What happened as population grew wasn’t famine but the industrial revolution. In 1968, when the world’s population was around 3 billion, in “The Population Bomb,” Paul Ehrlich ominously predicted “in the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash program.” Instead of worldwide starvation, we had an explosion of agricultural productivity due to hybrid seeds and better irrigation.
Today, with the human population over 6.7 billion, Al Gore and his brotherhood of the boiling planet speak of carbon footprints, a widening hole in the ozone layer and ocean levels rising perilously, due to melting polar ice caps. Thus one fraud (Global Warming) is used to support another fraud (overpopulation).
Of course, the objective of Planned Parenthood International, the Optimum Population Trust and the United Nations Population Fund isn’t to sell theories but to eliminate people. Abortion and contraception are their goals. While overpopulation is an easily refuted theory, the worldwide decline of birthrates is a reality. The crisis confronting humanity in this century won’t be a “Soylent Green” scenario, but a declining workforce and an aging population, as fewer and fewer children are born each year thanks in part to overpopulation hysteria.
Pro-Choice – The term removes abortion from the abortion debate.
Who can oppose choice? Is not America a country founded on personal liberty? But this isn’t a Coke-versus-Pepsi alternative. Proponents of the “pro-choice” position (also called a “woman’s right to choose”) want a mother with a child in her womb to be able to choose to have that demonstrably human life extinguished, to have the unborn child’s brains sucked out of its skull in a late-term abortion, and to allow abortion for any reason, no matter how trivial.
Those who call themselves pro-choice want women to have as little information as possible on which to make a reasoned choice. Thus they oppose waiting periods and informed consent. They don’t want women to know the nature of the unborn child or the health risks (physical and psychological) of abortion. Instead of being aware of fetal brainwaves and heartbeats (and the capacity of pre-born children to experience pain), they want women to embrace the lump-of-tissue/products-of-conception dogma based on ignorance.
Abortion is the only issue where choice is in vogue on the left. Should people be able to choose to own handguns, which can be used to defend a life as well as to take it? Absolutely not, proponents of choice reply! Some choices are just too dangerous to leave to the individual. Pro-lifers might rejoin that some things are just too evil to leave up to conscience.
Gun Control – The term implies that the possession and use of handguns is an entirely unregulated field – that underage, mental defectives, homicidal ex-felons and terrorists mumbling verses from the Koran can saunter into gun stores and stroll out with an AK-47 minutes later – that there are no state, federal or local laws regulating ownership and use, that there are no licensing laws, no waiting periods, no registration requirements, no age requirements, no safety regulations and no prohibitions of certain types of weapons. In 2003, the liberal Brookings Institution excitedly reported that rather than the oft-cited 20,000 figure, according to its estimate, in 1999, there were only “400 different state laws regulating the manufacture, design, sale, purchase and possession of firearms.’ (This does not include federal statutes and local ordinances) – making gun ownership still one of the most regulated activities in the United States.
The expression also suggests that gun control enhances safety. If anything, there is a negative relationship between gun control and crime rates. From 1973 to 1997, nationwide, overall gun possession went up 103% while the murder rate dropped 27.7%. States and municipalities with the most stringent gun laws tend to have the highest crime rates. Most Americans understand this intutively. Where would you feel safer on a Saturday night, in the South Bronx, South Central L.A., or in one of those middle-American towns where the disgruntled cling to their religion and their guns – as Obama put it during the 2008 Democratic primaries?
Gun control (leading to gun confiscation) has a strong appeal for liberal politicians who don’t want to control crime – those opposed to the death penalty, minimum sentencing and three-strikes-and-your-out laws. It creates the illusion of toughness by focusing on inanimate objects, instead of the murderers, robbers and rapists who use them.
Hate Speech – Hate speech is, well, hateful, and supposedly leads to hate crimes. In the wake of the shooting spree in Norway, the European and American left told us repeatedly that the tragedy was the result of anti-Muslim agitation. (The gunman wanted to stop Muslim immigration to Europe and Islamization of the continent.) It should be noted that the alleged shooter didn’t murder Muslims but white Norwegians at a socialist summer camp. Given Anders Breivik’s state of mind (his lawyer says he’s crazy), this makes perfect sense. It’s like: “I hate the French, so I think I’ll shoot a bunch of Eskimos.”
Those reputed to suffer the most from hate speech are always the left’s favorite victim groups – especially homosexuals and Muslims. The perps supposedly include: the pro-family movement, those opposed to homosexual marriage, conservative talk show hosts (particularly Glenn Beck), “anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Sarah Palin, and critics of Sharia, mega-mosques and stealth jihad.
When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and seriously wounded, and six killed in Tucson in January, some Democratic Congressman were screaming for the blood of conservative talk show hosts, or re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine – which amounts to the same thing.
After dozens of interrogations since he’s been in custody, and much time delving into the background of alleged shooter Jared Loughner, there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that he: listened to talk radio, was a fan of Sarah Palin or wanted to get tough with illegal immigration (all blamed for the attack). Loughner said he was into “conscience dreaming” as a way to counter a conspiracy to use “English grammar construction” to effect “mind control.” One of his professors at Pima Community College described him as “someone whose brains were scrambled,” and a former classmate said that in high school the habitual pothead was “left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.”
Irrelevant, say hate-speech haters; the right “created the climate of hate” in which such deeds flourish. Apparently, the only hateful words which lead to violence flow from the right. When Massachusetts Congressman Mike (Little Cesar) Capuano urged union goons demonstrating against limits on collective bargaining in Wisconsin to “get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” it did not raise an alarm in the MSM, other than a mild reprimand for the Congressman’s choice of words, even though the thugs proceeded to rough-up Tea Party counter-protestors.
They can call us paranoid Nazis who hate minorities and want to throw granny off a cliff, and it’s no big deal. We ask to see Obama’s birth certificate and it’s hate-speech dripping venom. The object is censorship – silencing talk radio via the FCC, prohibiting the expression of certain ideas as homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and the like. Those who can’t debate try to intimidate.
Lib-Speak I – A Lexicon For The Age Of Obama
Lib-Speak II - A Left-Icon For The Age Of Obama
Lib-Speak III - A Left-Icon For The Age Of Obama
Lib-Speak II - A Left-Icon For The Age Of Obama
Lib-Speak III - A Left-Icon For The Age Of Obama
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.
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