News Words

mis-speak

One of the rules of Orwellian Newspeak is that wherever an antonym can be removed from the language it ought to be removed. For example, since we have the word light, the word dark is redundant, because unlight serves just as well. By eliminating unnecessary opposites, the founding principle of Newspeak - to diminish the vocabulary as much as possible - is served.

Whereas in Oldspeak we might have used the word lie, we can now use the much better word mis-speak. This elimination of redundancy serves the laudable goal of removing heretical words from the language, and therefore also removing their associated concepts from our thought (or rather think). The foundation of all Newspeak is that if a we cannot say something we also cannot think it. Thus if we cannot use the word lie we also cannot think about the concept of lying, since it no longer exists. This has considerable benefits for those forced toaccount for themselves in public life.

bigot

In a rather splenetic piece from the current issue of Human Events, Gary Bauer forms a neat little syllogism concluding that Bill Maher is a bigot. He quotes Merriam Webster's definition of bigot: 'One who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance', then Maher: 'I have hated the church way before anyone else', and comes to the inevitable conclusion that Maher is by definition a bigot. And, of course, everybody knows that bigots are evil.

Impeccable logic, Mr Bauer, but sadly false premises. By this reasoning we would have to indict almost everybody in America, to say nothing of the rest of the world, on the charge of bigotry. What clear thinking person does not hate groups like al-Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan? By Mr Bauer's definition one would have to be positively morally remiss not to be a bigot.

Of course, his error lies with the definition. The Merriam Webster quote was accurate, but not complete; he neglected to include the previous sentence: 'a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices'. The important words being obstinately and prejudices, meaning pre-judgments, or judgments in absence of facts. A better definition comes from Chambers: 'a person blindly and obstinately devoted to a particular set of ideas, creed or political party, and dismissive towards others'.

Since Mr Bauer can plainly read, and since he clearly has a copy of the dictionary, I can only attribute his error to wilful obfuscation of the truth in service of a pre-formed conclusion. Now that's what I call bigotry.

elitist

Does anybody know what this word means? An elite is a group of people who are, in some way, better than other people. It could be that they are better educated, or better able to take on some task, or some other superiority. What, then, could an elitist be? In one sense anti-elitism is at the foundation of the democratic movement. We no longer award positions of leadership and authority based solely on membership of an elite, but through popular elections.

But anti-elitism has come recently, I think, to mean something else. It refers to a belief that in some areas there is no meaningful measure of goodness outside subjective opinion. We ought not to be claiming that Mozart is better than rap, or that a history professor has any greater insight into the causes of World War II than the common man on the street. This sort of elitism is a far more profound rejection of the very concept of superiority. It has infected popular thinking to such an extent - in America at least - that we are now suspicious of anybody who professes superior knowledge or expertise about anything. Political elections in the US have become not so much a contest to convince the public that candidates can better do the job for which they are running, but a race to show people that they are just one of the people. This seems to have had some bad results.

This new concept of elitism has gone unchallenged because it is not understood. The word is used casually without any agreed definition, and therefore serves more to confuse than to enlighten. We would be better off without it.