Speechless

Controlling Words, Controlling Minds

Michael Knowles

• Publisher: Regnery
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781684511167
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Every single American needs to read Michael Knowles's Speechless. I don't mean 'read it eventually.' I mean: stop what you're doing and pick up this book."— CANDACE OWENS "The most important book on free speech in decades—read it!" — SENATOR TED CRUZ A New Strategy: We Win, They Lose The Culture War is over, and the culture lost.The Left's assault on liberty, virtue, decency, the Republic of the Founders, and Western civilization has succeeded.You can no longer keep your social media account—or your job—and acknowledge truths such as: Washington, Jefferson, and Columbus were great men. Schools and libraries should not coach children in sexual deviance. Men don't have uteruses.How did we get to this point?Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire exposes and diagnosis the losing strategy we have fallen for and shows how we can change course—and start winning.In the groundbreaking Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds Knowles reveals:

• How the "free speech absolutists" gave away the store
• The First Amendment does not require a value-neutral public square
• How the Communists figured out that their revolution could never succeed as long as the common man was attached to his own culture
• Where political correctness came from
• How, comply or resist, political correctness is a win-win game for the bad guys
• Why taking our stand on "freedom of speech" helps put atheism, decadence, and nonsense on the same plane with faith, virtue, and reality
• The real question: Will we shut down drag queen story hour, or cancel Abraham Lincoln?
• For 170 years the First Amendment was compatible with prayer in public school
• How the atheists got the Warren Court to rule their way
• To this day, there's a First Amendment exception for obscenity. What exactly is the argument that perverts' teaching toddlers to twerk is not obscene?

Read Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds if you want to learn how to take the fight to the enemy.

CHAPTER 1 THE WEST IN WONDERLAND

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

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

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”¹

With that brief exchange in Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll prefigured political correctness, the war of words that would define our politics more than a century later. What does it matter whether we call someone who breaks the law to enter the country an “illegal alien” or an “undocumented immigrant”? What’s the difference between a Christmas tree and a “holiday tree”? Doesn’t global warming pose the same threat to our civilization regardless of whether or not we rename it “climate change” or, more recently, “the climate crisis”? Why quibble over semantics?

The difference may be semantic, but semantics matter. When people describe a distinction as “just semantics,” they mean to dismiss it as trivial. But how many of those people know what the word “semantics” means? “Semantics,” it turns out, means meaning itself. Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, which exist so that we can distinguish one thing from another. This process of discernment begins with our very first words. A baby cries out, “Mama!” to distinguish Mommy from Daddy. Today even that basic distinction falls afoul of politically correct orthodoxy, as we will come to see. What Humpty Dumpty understands and Alice fails to see is that words shape how we think; they color how we view the world.

Humpty Dumpty had clearly read his Aristotle, the ancient philosopher who defined man as a “political animal,” more so than “any other gregarious animals” because man has the power of speech. Other beasts may have the ability to grunt or yell indications of their pleasure or pain, but only man has the power of speech “to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust.”² Man alone can tell good from evil. The ability to articulate those distinctions “makes a family and a state.” And both Humpty Dumpty and Aristotle understood that the relationship goes further: politics is speech. In statecraft, when speech fails, war ensues. If, in the words of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” speech is the practice of politics by ordinary means.³

Language changes naturally over time. A notable recent example is the word literally, which once meant the use of words in their most basic sense without recourse to metaphor but now also describes the use of words metaphorically, which is the opposite of literally. If that isn’t confusing enough, the word literal refers to letters, which are symbols and therefore the opposite of literal, and the non-literal sense of literal goes back at least a century, to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses—all of which is to say that the natural evolution of language is complicated.⁴

The politically correct perversion of language, on the other hand, is neither natural nor complicated. Political correctness is like a man attempting to give himself a nickname. The artifice and transparency of the act make it impossible. The nickname will never stick—unless the man has the power to enforce it.

Consider social scientists’ newly invented, politically correct name for young criminals. There is nothing natural about calling a young criminal a “justice-involved youth,” and the reason for the lexical change isn’t complicated.⁵ Leftist political activists wanted to spring bad kids from the clink, so they decided to rename the juvenile delinquents, who by definition had involved themselves with injustice, as “justice-involved” to make the public more amenable to their release. The unnatural jargon hasn’t taken hold in popular culture, but it has stuck in higher education and administrative government because the activists and their allies control those institutions.

Since words matter so much, the definition of “political correctness” itself must matter. Differing definitions of political correctness agree that it involves rejecting certain language to better conform to some political orthodoxy. The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, for example, defined the term in 1997 as “conformity to a body of liberal or radical opinion on social matters, characterized by the advocacy of approved views and the rejection of language and behavior considered discriminatory or offensive.”⁶ These are all necessary features of political correctness, but they are not sufficient. Political correctness does not merely mask the harsh realities to which clear language refers; it actually contradicts the underlying meaning of words, thrusting culture through the looking glass.

Most people recognize that language plays a role in leftist ideology. But the relationship goes further than that. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes the relationship between the politically correct lexicon Newspeak and the English socialist regime IngSoc. “Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” asks a member of the totalitarian party. “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is IngSoc and IngSoc is Newspeak.”⁷ The same might be said of political correctness and leftism. A man who believes he is a woman must at all times be called a “trans woman,” or better still just a “woman,” because leftist ideology demands a liberation so radical that a man can become a woman simply by saying so. Language does not merely reinforce the ideology but actually constitutes it.

Some defenders of political correctness have admitted that they use language to manipulate reality, but they maintain that their conservative opponents do the very same. The Oxford linguist Deborah Cameron made this accusation during the debates over political correctness that roiled the academy in the 1990s. According to Cameron, with the advent of political correctness, liberal “verbal hygienists” were simply pointing out “that the illusion of a common language depends on making everyone accept definitions which may be presented as neutral and universal, but which in fact represent the particular standpoint of straight white men from the most privileged social classes.”⁸ In other words, they declared value-neutral language a lie designed to enforce patriarchy and white supremacy.

Around the same time, the literary theorist Stanley Fish published There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, in which he denies the possibility of a “disinterested search for truth” and insists that traditional language is “no less politically invested” than politically correct jargon.⁹ Even the conservative columnist Robert Kelner dismissed concerns over the new jargon in the early 1990s as “our phony war on political correctness.” Conservatives manipulate language and culture too, he conceded, and that spin constitutes our own form of political correctness.

The critics have a point. Leftists are not alone in manipulating language for political ends. President John F. Kennedy, quoting the journalist Edward R. Murrow, famously commended Winston Churchill for having “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle” during the Second World War, and no one has ever accused Winston Churchill of being “politically correct,” as Lady Astor could attest.¹⁰ Statesmen and orators from Pericles to Donald Trump have wielded language to suit their purposes. No one considers Donald Trump “politically correct” either. What the critics miss is that the manner in which each side manipulates language differs.

The Right tends to manipulate language by using strong words to evoke clear images. Churchill promised, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”¹¹ Churchill didn’t speak of “overseas contingency operations,” as Barack Obama would decades later. He told the world he would “fight”—a clear, concise Saxon word. Then he tells you exactly where he intends to fight, and then, in case you missed his point, he tells you he will “never surrender.”

Donald Trump chose similarly blunt words, albeit perhaps less gracefully, when he announced his bid for president in 2015 by decrying illegal aliens, whom he accused of “bringing drugs,” “bringing crime,” and being “rapists.” Even his caveat—that some, he assumed, were “good people”—relied on strong, simple speech to convey his meaning.¹² Whether or not you liked what Trump said, you knew what he meant.

Political correctness relies on euphemism, soft words used to sugarcoat harsh realities. We all use euphemisms some of the time as a matter of good manners. We refer to old women as “women of a certain age.” We mourn those who have “passed away” rather than those who have died. In prior ages, a lady went to “powder her nose,” and she still uses the “bathroom” or the “restroom” rather than the toilet.¹³ We use euphemisms—literally, “well-speaking” or auspicious words—to be polite.¹⁴

In all those cases, the polite euphemism softens the reality it describes, but it doesn’t contradict that reality. The old woman is indeed a woman of a certain age. The poetical “passing away” describes the spiritual fact of death. Women may indeed powder their noses after they’ve done whatever else they do in rooms that often include a bath and in which anyone might rest. Polite euphemisms soften the truth, but they do not lie.

Leftists tend to manipulate language by using vague terms and jargon not just to soften but to conceal and even contradict the realities to which they refer. Killing babies in the womb becomes “women’s healthcare” and “reproductive rights,” even though abortion results in precisely the opposite of health and reproduction. After a Muslim terror attack on a church in Sri Lanka, Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for “Easter worshippers,” a bizarre moniker designed to hide the victims’ Christian identity. In fact, the sole instance in which Hillary used clear language in 2016—when she referred to Americans who refused to support her as “deplorable” and “irredeemable”—proved to be the most disastrous moment of her campaign. Clinton had made a critical error for a radical politician: she told people what she really thought.

A blunt term such as “cripple” conveys a clear meaning. Less vivid synonyms such as “disabled” or “handicapped” retain that meaning while giving perhaps less offense. The politically correct “handi-capable” gives less offense still but at the expense of meaning: the euphemism means the opposite of the condition it describes.

Political correctness lies. The very phrase “political correctness” illustrates this intrinsic dishonesty, as “political correctness” is no more political than any other sort of speech, and it isn’t correct. The phrase came into use as a way to categorize falsehoods that ideologues believed ought to be considered true for political purposes. Much politically correct jargon follows the formula of adding an unusual adjective or adverb to a noun or adjective. The late presidential speechwriter and conservative columnist William Safire described this form as the “adverbially premodified adjectival lexical unit,” the description itself a play on PC jargon.¹⁵ Around the time Safire described this form, comedians were also mocking it endlessly, translating terms like “short” into the politically correct–sounding “vertically challenged.”

In this formula, the adjective or adverb usually serves to negate the noun or adjective it modifies. The term “politically correct” itself follows this politically correct formula by using an adverb to negate the adjective it precedes. That is, “correct” means true. But “politically correct” means not true. “Justice” means getting what one deserves without favor. The politically correct “social justice” is a form of injustice because it means getting what one does not deserve because one is favored. “Marriage” in every culture throughout history has meant the union of husbands and wives. “Same-sex marriage,” however favorably one views the concept, is not marriage.

The history of “same-sex marriage” offers a telling glimpse into the ultimate purpose of political correctness: to achieve political ends without ever having to engage in electoral politics. One cannot really speak of a debate over same-sex marriage in the United States because there never was any debate. Before any such debate could take place, politically correct wordsmiths had redefined marriage to include monogamous same-sex unions and in so doing redefined the central question of the debate from nature to rights. The question “What is marriage?” passed quickly to “Who has the right to get married?” presupposing that the first issue had already been settled in the radicals’ favor.

According to the view held by every society everywhere in history, marriage involves sexual difference. Some societies permit polygamy, some permit divorce, but all cultures have understood marriage as an institution of sexually different spouses oriented toward, though not necessarily requiring, the procreation and education of offspring. A good-faith debate over redefining marriage would first consider what marriage is and why everyone everywhere else in history has gotten it so wrong. But that debate might have stymied political “progress.” The cultural revolutionaries found it far easier to redefine the terms according to the conclusions they hoped to reach. When conservatives acquiesced to the verbal trickery, the radicals won the debate before it had even begun.

Likewise the debate over whether “transgender” people should be able to use the bathroom of their choice came down not to argument but to the definition and redefinition of terms. This ostensibly frivolous question dominated American political discourse in the mid-2010s, and the debate continues even into this decade, despite the infinitesimally small number of people who actually suffer confusion over their biological sex—a condition known as “gender dysphoria” before radicals normalized the disorder.

On the one side, the politically correct insisted that men who believe themselves to be women must be permitted use of the women’s bathroom. After all, those poor souls aren’t really men but rather “trans women,” entitled to use the facilities available to every other kind of woman. On the other side, sensible people observed that men are not in fact women, and if single-sex bathrooms are to exist at all, men must be barred from the ladies’ room. The debate, such as it was, had little to do with bathrooms or rights or the small number of sexually confused people themselves. Rather, it came down to Alice’s question “whether you can make words mean so many different things” and to Humpty Dumpty’s politics: “which is to be master?”

Political correctness goes further than demanding fealty to a set of opinions. It promises to fundamentally transform the world. Political corr...