Bad Words to be Purged from the Language
By John Crouch, Attorney at Law,
Crouch & Crouch, Arlington, Virginia; (703)
528-6700; , Copyright John Crouch 1991
Brown Daily Herald October 28, 1991
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (U.S.)
Other Crouch Articles
What if Dinesh D'Souza is right? Suppose our nation's elite campuses are
ruled by unreconstructed Yippie deans and cloned professors under orders
from the Comintern. Gangs of multicultural stormtroopers impose speech codes
on their helpless classmates. And, of course, the subsidized leftist philistine
newspaper prints periodic updates on newly-banned words. It doesn't hurt
to imagine ...
"As Brown Community Communication Co-Coordinator, I have determined
that the following noises, once thought to be "speech," actually
constitute behavior which fatally distorts the perception of reality:
Authorities. The problem is that people with power test the limits
of their authority to see where it can expand.When they get into the news,
it is often because someone is challenging whether they indeed are "authorities"
over what they're trying to control. When the media refer to them casually
as "authorities," it sort of closes the debate before it begins.
This gets even more absurd when we speak of "Iraqi authorities"
or "Chinese authorities." These people have as much authority
as a mugger does over her victims. There must be a more value-neutral word
for this.
The New Paper recently reported that two-thirds of deported aliens are
arrested on narcotics charges. Good riddance, right? The catch is
that police use the word "narcotic" to mean marihuana, as well
as addictive opiates. They also have a vile habit of using "cooperate"
to mean "follow orders." Journalists like to show off by parroting
the jargon of the people they write about, but they shouldn't let cops rewrite
the dictionary.
Pro-life is often criticized for its unnecessary vagueness. Pro-choice
is also an overly general term. It begs the question of who makes the choice:
the law, doctors, the mother, or the fetus - who, human or not, certainly
has the most to lose.
Hate speech, groups etc. As angry as they make us,Doug Hann [prominent
Brown University racial slurster] and friends are still expressing opinions,
not hate. They probably have feelings of superiority, entitlement, self-pity,
fear, envy, and contempt, but I doubt that many racists are possessed by
hate or anything else unknown to the rest of us. The ones I know espouse
sociological theories which were dominant until the 1940s, and think their
own experiences empirically support them. They don't even dislike minorities,
as long as they stay in their familiar "place."
In an age when "two-dimensional" is a term of disdain, the
political spectrum is awkwardly one-dimensional. If we must base our
thinking on silly metaphors, let's replace this one with a 3D object with
a crisp crust and a gooey center, like a calzone or a planet.
Fervor can mean any belief you disagree with, but lately [1991]
it is attributed to people who don't think the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia should
remain united and communist. You don't have to argue rationally with people
who suffer from this joyfully feverish kind of rabies, since they obviously
wouldn't understand.
Bash A Bigot Day, B.A.S.H., accusations of (verbal) gay-bashing
or student-government-bashing -- this word has somehow moved from the ravings
of revolutionaries into the mainstream, helping to blur the distinction
between criticism and violence.
Where I'm from, I never hear the words anal or phallic.
I guess we just don't use shallow pop-psychology to belittle other people's
cultures or beliefs. Instead, we think of them as demon-possessed, communist,
foreign, or just plain evil.
- John Crouch
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