Proposition 8 is still under legal assault in California. But whether or not traditionalists lose this battle, their loose tongues help guarantee they will lose the war.

According to the left, we traditionalists just aren’t as smart as they are. We’re not college professors, 95 percent of whom are registered Democrats. We’re not national mainstream-media journalists, only 8 percent of whom don the conservative label. We’re not Hollywood types, 83 percent of . . . wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, intelligence.

In reality, the only authentic intellectualism resides on the right. Sometimes you wouldn’t know it, though, with how some of my philosophical soul mates get snookered by social engineers. And what I want to focus on today is what I’ve dubbed The Lexicon of the Left.

In the 1938 book The Tyranny of Words, we’re told that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate. This isn’t hard to understand. Imagine, for instance, you had a German culture and a French one vying for cultural primacy in the same geographical area. If the Germans could convince the French to speak German, it’s safe to say they would have already won half the battle.

The same holds true with our cultural, political and spiritual battles. As an example, consider a documentary on the development of life I watched in which the narrator pointed to a female infant and said (I’m paraphrasing), “She’s only a few pounds of chemicals and water, but she’s really one of the most amazing things.” Now, if his mentality became widely reflected in language – if, let’s say, we took to calling people “organic robots” – I think man’s amazement at an infant would wane . . . followed by his respect for life. It’s much like calling a baby seven months younger an "unviable tissue mass."

Another real-life example of this is the faux-marriage debate. It’s ever in the news, and right now the homosexual lobby is still agitating against California’s Proposition 8 – and viciously attacking its supporters. Yet today I must also criticize these traditionalists, albeit on a different basis.

The hapless gentleman I’ll use as a case study in rightist error is Dave Thomas, a journalist appearing at Examiner.com. While he criticizes faux marriage’s supporters for their Brownshirt-like tactics, he nevertheless uses their terminology, writing, “Pro gay and lesbian supporters want a boycott of the hotel after owner Doug Manchester donated $125,000 to the campaign to ban gay marriage in California.”

Thomas’ use of the euphemism “gay” is bad enough, but he also uses the oxymoronic term “gay marriage.” Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m a strong supporter of gay marriage. After all, the consequence of not having one is often a very unhappy divorce. However, since Thomas is applying the term in the uniquely modern sense, I’ll point out the problem with using “gay marriage”: no such institution exists.

Yet using the term engenders quite the opposite idea. It’s much like if a movement seeking to bestow human rights upon animals started calling a dog a “canine human.” How productive would it be if the traditionalist opponents of the movement became parrot-humans and started mindlessly repeating their adversaries’ chosen term? It would be folly, tacit acknowledgement that such humans exist. Imagine, traditionalists might say, “They can be canine humans in private, but we don’t think their humanity should be recognized by government.” Yeah, that’s a winning argument.  

The left is not this sloppy. Pro-abortion advocates, for instance, would never propose denying human rights to the unborn while also calling the unborn “human.” Leftists don’t call them babies. Leftists don’t call them children. They are “lumps of tissue.”

Now, if the left is meticulous in the use of language in service of a lie, can we not be so in service of the Truth? 

Yet we’re not. We will say, “Gays can get married privately if they want, but it shouldn’t be recognized by government.” Or, as I’ve heard Bill O’Reilly do, we’ll speak of “heterosexual marriage.” But what is the other side of the coin of “heterosexual marriage”?

When using this terminology, we indicate that something called “gay marriage” actually exists. And think about how mainstreaming this affects young minds. A generation believing unborn babies don’t exist (only “unviable tissue masses” do) won’t be inclined to afford them human rights. Likewise, a generation believing “gay marriage” does exist will be disinclined to deny “gays” marriage rights.

Thus, our position must be simple: there cannot be recognition of something that doesn’t exist. “Heterosexual marriage” is a redundancy; “homosexual marriage” is an oxymoron. There is only marriage, that union between a man and woman. We must never waver on this, and our language must reflect our conviction. To deviate from this principle with Leftspeak makes our lips the author of our own defeat.

This is why I use the term “faux marriage” in this discussion (if you have a better one, I’m all ears). It’s also why I’m careful to avoid Leftspeak in general. You won’t see me use “gender,” “capitalism,” “African-American,” “he or she,” “chairperson” or any other university-generated lexical abomination (I explain why in-depth here).

The ubiquity of Leftspeak frustrates me, but not because of the left’s sin of commission but the right’s mistake of omission. Few traditionalist commentators are mindful of language manipulation; they don’t appreciate its significance. But remember that the Lexicon of the Left didn’t spontaneously generate; instead, its elements were usually spawned on college campuses and spread through the mainstream media. Thus, we have to ponder two questions: if words are so significant that the left works feverishly to universalize their own language model, shouldn’t we be just as zealous about rejecting it? Why should we speak the way the social engineers demand? 

Since, commendably, traditionalists lack guile – they say what they mean and mean what they say – it’s not surprising they fall victim to the tyranny of words. So, no, we’re not stupid. But, boy, sometimes we sure do seem naïve.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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Well, you're right about one thing..., Lowly rated comment [Show]

MarkGlen said:

	Conservative Keys uses the right language. I found some goog language a minute ago. It is called truth: http://www.newsmax.com/insidec...ode=7ACC-1
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February 23, 2009 | url
Votes: +2

James Fox said:

	Mr. Webster's 1828 Dictionary is a standard for American, biblical, and rock solid definitions. Go buy a copy at www.face.net. This dictionary will change your life and will change our culture's life.
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February 23, 2009
Votes: +4

James Fox said:

Check out the original 1828 Webster's Dictionary and use it! Biblical Definitions Restored /files/Dictionary/DICT-2T.jpgNoah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language was produced during the years when the American home, church and school were established upon a Biblical and patriotic basis. Webster, descended on his mother's side from Pilgrim Governor, William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation, made important contributions to an American educational system which kept the nation on a Christian Constitutional course for many years. The famous "blue-backed Speller," his "Grammars," and "Reader," all contained Biblical and patriotic themes and Webster spearheaded the flood of educational volumes emphasizing Christian Constitutional values for more than a century. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 1828 Dictionary should contain the greatest number of Biblical definitions given in any reference volume. Webster considered "education useless without the Bible" and while he cautioned against too extensive use of the Bible in schools as "tending to irreverence," he reiterated, "In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people . . ." /files/Dictionary/psalms.jpg Today when the Biblical basis of education is under systematic attack we need to capitalize upon the availability of our first American Dictionary - the only dictionary in the world to "draw water out of the wells of salvation"—to utilize God's written word as a key to the meaning of words. Historically, it documents the degree to which the Bible was America's basic text book in all fields.

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February 23, 2009
Votes: +4

archtoplee said:

Lexicon of the left We aren't losing nor can we lose. It's impossible for God to allow that to happen. This is only a small skirmish that is preparing us to engage the enemies of God. The homosexual sodomites don't realize how quickly the battle can turn and just how easily we can shove them back into the closet. The ridiculous rantings of Sean Penn at the Academy Awards notwithstanding,these weakly delivered insignificant speeches try to portray homosexual sodomites as victims when in fact they are the victimizers of society. When the war starts to turn you'll see every Hollywood director, producer, writer and casting director swear he was always on our side! These people are such cowards. What has been holding us up from putting things right in America are those phony preachers on television like Joel "sickly sweet" Olsteen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfwYU2pmWYQ and Obama's favorite CFR preacher Rick "Purposeless Driven Life" Warren. Once we expose these creeps for the false prophets that they are all you other creeps who like to use the label "GBLT" will be back in their closets where they belong.The only label that society will tolerate is "Good" and you will be welcomed to rejoin society once you repent of your sins.

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February 23, 2009
Votes: -1

danwhitehead1 said:

Absolutely correct Thank you very much, Mr. Duke. You are 100% on the mark. So so are you, archtoplee. As for John K, I wouldn't be so sure if I were you. It's not over yet; not by a long shot. There are many who, by God's grace, come to realize that homosexuality is not a lifestyle, it is a deathstyle. There is nothing gay about it. That is a lie straight out of the mind of satan. The Lord Jesus Christ can, and does, rescue and save. There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.

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February 23, 2009
Votes: +3

The least of my brothers, Lowly rated comment [Show]

danwhitehead1 said:

	Out of context To Juan You need to study the context of you quotation. You're way off base.
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February 23, 2009
Votes: +4

RichardR369 said:

	Dictionary Banned from Courtroom. I cannot at this time remember the story but a judge banned a dictionary in a courtroom because one of the lawyers was twisting a word's definition around to win the case. It only makes sense that he who controls the dictionary, controls the society.
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February 24, 2009
Votes: +2

Douglas Strother said:

	Gay marriage gets recognition — in the dictionary Gay marriage gets recognition — in the dictionary http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090319/ap_on_fe_st/gay_marriage_definition I just found this on Yahoo at 11p on 18 Mar 2009. The pervert dictionaries are rolling off the presses!
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March 19, 2009
Votes: +1