Playing A Dangerous Game

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

We've all heard that quote before, and frankly, I think we should take it to heart.  It's generally attributed to Voltaire, but some have said it was from a biography of Voltaire penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who wrote under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre.   She was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire titled The Life of Voltaire, first published in 1903. She also wrote The Friends of Voltaire, which she completed in 1906.  She didn't actually say it, she intimated that Voltaire said it. So, notwithstanding the feminists' claim to the quote, I'll credit Voltaire, thank you just the same.

But think about it when you hear the next snowflake whine about hate speech, whatever that is.  One of my best friends used to joke with this witticism: "I'm not bigoted; I just avoid niggers, spics and Jews!" The humor of this is in its contradiction.  But the truth and subtlety of the statement is lost on those pearl clutchers who immediately feign outrage at those three censored words.  Oops, that's hate speech.  We gotta stomp that out.  But there's no hate there.  It's simply a stated personal preference, which all of us have.  But what if we applied Voltaire's maxim instead of being triggered or offended?  We may recoil in disgust at its vulgarity, but if we truly champion free speech, we defend the right to say it, and move on.

It seems we've unlearned the old schoolyard rhyme:  "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."  Not so in today's infantile "woke" culture.  We're taught now that words are akin to assault.  We are encouraged to seek safe spaces from words that trigger or offend.  And we're further encouraged to shame, or condemn or even arrest those who may speak of things abhorrent to us, or to use words or phraseology that somehow upsets our tender sensibilities. 

The English language is one of the most - if not the most - expressive language in use today.  It's full of nuance and form and meaning that enhances conceptual understanding.  Ideas and concepts are made easier to grasp using English, because it contains a plethora of words that when combined into sentences, make thoughts and ideas more understandable.  For example, the Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989, contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 considered obsolete. Add to this around 9,500 derivative words included as sub-entries.  Yet the average native English speaker acquires a vocabulary of perhaps 48,000 during his lifetime. 

But some elitists want to decimate this rich language by eliminating certain words they don't like.  And why are the Marxist/Socialist left in this country so anxious to ban or censor certain words?  To regulate, moderate and censor free speech, perhaps?  To nullify the God-given right to speak freely and openly?  Merely because some indoctrinated snowflake may be offended by hearing them?  To spare some idiot's tender sensibilities?  Or is there a more nefarious reason the left seeks to change the language?  If you change the language, you change the process of cognition, or understanding, and yes, of meaning.  So instead of using a vibrant and expressive language to seek ever deeper meaning, and exploring ideas more vigorously, the left seeks the opposite: rigid, dumbed-down and unenlightened. And that's their goal - to transform the basic concepts of understanding so that it adheres to, and supports, the left's insane world view.

Stimulate thinking and knowledge, or adhere to a rigid limited political dogma?  Expand the human brain, or deliberately atrophy it?  I know what my choice is; I'll use my native language as completely as I am able.  But the elitists, who seek to return society to a class structured feudalism, have made their choice as well.  But only for us, not for them.

And that's playing a dangerous game.