”The present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.”
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
I. What happens when words are no longer our common touchstone?
Ever notice how we cannot talk anymore?
All conversation, from dialogue to disputation, takes place against an assumed background of agreement about very basic things. Even disagreement presupposes vast areas of at least implicit agreement. Otherwise, conversation would be literally impossible. But what if even those areas of core agreement—mutual appeals to reason, to first principles of reason, to common words and the concepts they signify—have been radically, deliberately and systematically undermined?
Conversation is the lifeblood of community; it is where we explore and find common ground, and teach one another about virtually everything, despite other differences. When words no longer have shared and stable meanings, when reason and evidence cease to be touchstones of truth, a people are easily uprooted, alienated, and dispersed into warring camps bent on refashioning the world in accordance with the ideologies that have taken hold of them instead. The ensuing frenzied and genocidal atrocities of history—the French, Chinese, Russian, Cambodian and Iranian revolutions come to mind—are well known.
In this essay, I’ll touch briefly on the undermining of reason, which I will expand upon elsewhere; here I will focus on the gradual loss of “some common words and the concepts they signify,” especially the word “Right.”
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Socrates: a “gadfly” to “sting awake the populace”
Anyone with even a cursory familiarity with the Platonic dialogues will remember that Socrates was always prompting his interlocutors to refine what they meant by the words they were using, say “justice” or “goodness” or “beauty.” At his trial, Socrates described himself as a “gadfly” trying to “sting awake” the Athenian population, who had fallen asleep under the potent spell of the Sophists; who were, like their modern day descendants, teaching their students the art of dissembling via words and concepts, and their categories and meanings, in their pursuit of power.
Education at its most fundamental level—and following Socrates’ example, long honored in the West—is the refinement of our concepts and therefore our words. In this way, the primary intention of all genuine education is to form coherent intellects and to teach students to grasp things as they really are. A person so formed is relatively immune from ideologies and shallow and ephemeral ideas. And a community, or polis, of such people is a relatively stable one.
If education at its most fundamental level is the refining of our words and concepts, what is the opposite? What is the intention behind confusing our words and concepts? Say, to confuse young people about what a “woman” or a “man” is? When you introduce this confusion into intellects, what sort of citizen are you forming? As Plato argued in The Republic, disorders in the intellect find their way into chaos in the public square and the body politic. That is where we find ourselves now.
To confuse the intellect about words and concepts, about meanings and categories, is obviously precisely the opposite of education. And this what we’ve had for more than 50 years now. Rather than education, one might call it a “malformation” of the intellect.
Those who would refashion the world in accordance with their theories—which could almost be a definition of marxism, the provenance of all ideologies—invariably start with deceptively refashioning words.
“But isn’t change the very “vitality” of language?”
Perhaps it can be; but it isn’t necessarily so, and certainly not always.
However, one thing is for sure: “vitality in language”—whatever that means—isn’t achieved by shifting meanings, vagueness, or deception. If anything, vitality is achieved by specificity. Words seem almost electrically charged when they actually mean something specific.
The connection between language and thought is a very close one. Muddled thought cannot help but express itself in muddied language. And it works the other way around too: muddled language muddles thought. The corruption of words disorders thought, which disorders the person, which disorders the community, the polis, and the social order.
This is particularly true of technical language. And much of what I will discuss here in this essay—such as the meaning of a Right, or a Privilege, or even Marriage—are core cultural if not technical words. Imagine a garage or shop where the word “wrench” has shifting references of meaning over time and among different workers. Communication would immediately be debased if not altogether impossible (“please, would you pass me that “thing” over there?”)
The first rule of writing and speaking: say what you mean. Nothing more. Nothing less.
But what exactly do the cultural marxists among us mean, for example, by “marriage”? Not what most people have ever meant. At best they mean just an intense emotional commitment.
Such a definition of “marriage” isn’t more “inclusive.” It’s simply misleading and inaccurate. Actually, it’s worse: it disembowels the real and very rich concept of marriage, and replaces it with an impoverished and banal notion.
Vagueness and euphemism are primary modes of deception. One can hide any sort of barbarism and cruelty behind a nice-sounding or even empty phrase. Calling abortion “healthcare,” I suppose, sounds quite a bit better than “killing your child.”
A person who is not attuned to words, who reflexively absorbs such phrases, is particularly susceptible to unconscious political conformity, groupthink, etc.
As Orwell wrote in his “Politics and the English Language,” words and “ready-made phrases” can “even think your thoughts for you” if you’re not careful.
The liars, sophists, and con-artists among us—not excluding many politicians—would rather that words not have stable meanings
This is especially true with core technical words and concepts, such as a “Right,” because they impinge so deeply upon our world. Notice how the cultural marxists leave the word “broccoli” alone?
They want to be unaccountable and they want us divided; and what better way than to destabilize the meaning of words? And it’s working beautifully. The inability to engage in actual disputation that is based in reason and evidence, and observes basic logic, including the first principles of reason, is diminishing if not entirely gone among most if not nearly all of the population. And that is reflected in the current tumult and chaos of the public sphere.
I've been saying for a decade that the US, and now the world at large, is verging on civil war. And I don't say that lightly.1 But the confusion exampled by the debate about “Rights” is one of the reasons why this sadly does not seem an impossibility. Is freedom from “hateful” speech a Right? Is healthcare a Right? Is voting a Right? Is marriage a Right? Do you have a Right to food, water and shelter?
It is imperative that we come to a mutual understanding about many things. And what we mean by a “Right” is a good place to start.
Widespread confusion about what a Right actually is
For example, in wake of Dobbs v. Jackson, everyone from “prince” Harry to “bidan” has been sounding the alarm that abortion “rights”—which they call “a basic human right”—are being taken away. “Bidan” even signed an Executive Order “to protect the reproductive rights of women in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s extreme decision to overturn Roe v Wade.” Because that’s how things work: if you don’t like how the Courts rule, you rule by dictate. (What happens when that doesn’t work?)
Meanwhile, the “mainstream media” is throwing a temper tantrum: hyperventilating that “rights” are being taken away and that we need to abolish the Constitution, and especially the Supreme Court. Three examples among thousands:
Even the undemocratic, authoritarian and fake “European Parliament” chimed in to condemn the USSC decision to overturn what they call “abortion rights.”
What is a “Right,” anyway?
As we shall see below, a Right is a technical term and a far narrower thing than it has come to be used colloquially.
For example, you have a Right to pursue happiness in the way that you see fit; you do not, however, have a “Right to happiness” itself. That is, to actually have or obtain it. This difference is key to understanding this essay.
To broaden a Right to mean “I should be able to have or be or do x” is to usurp the notion altogether into its very opposite: a kind of privilege.
Getting our words right is essential to putting our world—or at least ourselves, which is really the only place to start—to rights. Especially technical words which are not as subject to change and for good reason. Get these terms wrong and chaos follows.
So let us restore the word Right to its proper meaning.
In Section II will attempt to refine what is traditionally meant by a Right; in Section III we’ll look at three controversial examples (healthcare, abortion, and gay marriage); in Section IV we’ll explore how the subversion of words is always about power, before concluding in Section V.
II. Reclaiming what is meant by a “Right”
“Men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say.”
C.S. Lewis, “The Death of Words”
An Initial Caveat
I’m afraid that the term “Right” has become so corrupted by indiscriminate use—alas, even by conservatives themselves, who ought to know better—that I may be misunderstood by virtually every reader at the very outset of this essay.
Over the past half century and more, the seemingly inexorable march of our culture leftwards, encouraged and entrained by media and mis-education, has meant that it is impossible to articulate traditional understandings of many things without sounding offensive to many ears. The below analysis—which was hardly anything but centrist and uncontroversial for centuries—now seems so far removed from the tenor and assumptions of public discussion that it seems nearly equivalent of donning a codpiece. Many would now consider it intolerance, bigotry or even “hate speech.”
If I were to say, for example, that no one has a fundamental “right to food,” this is liable to sound to many ears as if I don’t think people should have food. In saying this, however, I would in no way mean anything like that. (That many would hear this meaning is a measure of the success of the cultural marxists.) To be sure, I believe everyone should have food; everyone should have access to food, and no one on earth should starve.
But to assert a “right to food” says something far more than everyone should have food. It means quite literally that the bearer of that “right” would have a “right” to someone else’s property and labor. And a “right” in that sense—which was introduced by the cultural marxists more than half a century ago—is very much like it’s opposite: a privilege. This is what cultural marxists do: they invert language to hide their real agenda.
Consider the following: what were feudal Royal Prerogatives but the privilege to requisition the wealth of their subjects at will? What were the privileges of feudal lords but to lay claim to the property, person, labor, food and various “incomes”of their vassal underlings?
A “right” to someone else’s property is an anathema to the whole concept of a Right. A Right, after all, is the opposite of a privilege: it marks out a personal realm of liberty that cannot be infringed upon by anyone.
Moreover, such a “right” also creates a corresponding obligation for someone else to provide what they have a “right” to. A “right to food” would mean that it is incumbent upon the State to provide food to the bearer of that “right” by taking it from someone else, and by force if need be. And this we do in the form of social welfare. However, properly understood, this welfare—for food, shelter and the necessaries of living, which properly ought to address absolute and not relative poverty—is a privilege that is conditionally bestowed. And it is a thing of charity; a thing of caritas, of caring and love. And decidedly not a Right. (So why not call it what it is, charity? Is there something wrong with charity, even if by proxy?)
This notion of “Positive Rights”—a Right to food, to shelter, to be free from poverty, to happiness, etc.—is merely a neo-marxist appropriation of traditional Rights language. By veiling privileges as a “right” they have profoundly confused and even cancelled actual Rights, divided the population, created a series of privileges, and ushered their ideological project of a marxist State that attempts to meet these corresponding obligations.
1. The best way to understand what a Right is to contrast it to a Privilege.
Rights have been conflated with what are in fact privileges, thereby corrupting both concepts into incoherence. So if we want to understand what a Right is, the first step is to disentangle the two concepts.
So what is a privilege? The word “privilege” comes from the Latin privilegium2: meaning, essentially, a law applying to one person. More specifically, a privilege is any benefit or advantage, or immunity or exemption, that is enjoyed only by a particular person or group beyond what is available to others, and is usually conditionally conferred by special authority or charter or license.
Three examples of Privileges: 1. a Patent or Charter; 2. a legal marriage (with its host of legal/financial advantages, as distinct from natural and/or religious matrimony) and 3. the ability to drive a vehicle on public roads and highways. These are privileges that are conferred conditionally. You do not and cannot possibly have a fundamental Right to possess a Patent or Charter; or to legally marry; or to drive a vehicle on the interstate highway system. It would be incoherent to argue otherwise. More on this below.
So what is a Right? The concept of Rights is bound up in Personal Sovereignty: there is a realm around your person, your intellect and will, that is your dominion, and yours alone. And that dominion cannot be infringed upon.
More fully—and in contradistinction to a privilege—a Right:
A Right applies to all human beings in possession of their faculties of intellect and will, and this unconditionally, and irrespective of nation, race, creed, religion, gender. All persons, for example, have a Right to Free Speech. Whether a State secures this Right or not, nevertheless that Right exists.
Privileges of course, by their very nature, do not apply universally.
A Right does not require anyone else to do something for me, provide something to me, or require anyone else to alter or compel their behavior so that it is in conformity with my dictates. In other words, Rights are about establishing a domain of personal sovereignty, and are decidedly not about controlling other people’s thoughts, actions, and words.
The Right to Free Speech does not require anyone else to alter their thoughts, words and actions.
Conversely, you cannot have a “right” to not be offended, or to be free from “hate” speech, in part because this exacts requirements upon everyone else’s behavior. Speech codes are actually attempts to sneak a special privilege under the verbal disguise of a “right”
A Right exists ontologically prior to the State; meaning, a Right does not depend upon the existence of the State.
Privileges, conversely, are ontologically posterior to the State; that is to say, their existence in a very real way depends upon the existence of the State. More on this below.
A Right is not conferred conditionally by anyone, not even the State.
Privileges on the other hand are conditionally conferred.
A Right is not therefore subject to abridgment or being revoked (without due process and even then only in very a limited sense).
Conversely, privileges are by their nature conditional and conferred so they indeed can be, and often are, abridged or revoked.
Three examples of a Right are: 1. A Right to one’s property; 2. a Right to Free Speech; and 3. a Right to self-protection. They apply universally; they require no one else to alter their behavior; they do not conflict with other fundamental Rights; they exist ontologically prior to the State; they are not conferred by anyone, and therefore cannot be abridged or revoked.
So, for example: There is no fundamental right to drive on the interstate highway system. A blind person does not have a “right to drive”; the privilege is distinctly conditional: one must be able to pass a test, for example, to show proficiency. However, a blind person has the Right of free speech. There are no tests or conditions for that or any Fundamental Right.
2. Discussion of the above in the context of the most fundamental Right: Free speech
Freedom of speech is the first Amendment for a reason: because it protects all other fundamental rights (which is, in turn, protected by the 2nd Amendment.) The order is not haphazard.
Government is not granting you the Right to free speech. That Right already exists. Government exists, at least here in the US, to secure those Rights. And is expressly forbidden from attempting to infringe on it.
The First Amendment states clearly and in plain language that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” Meaning that the State has no authority over your speech and expression thereof, and cannot in any way abridge or abrogate that Right.
Now, you might say: but this Right isn’t absolute; we do have some limits and conditions upon Free Speech: you cannot, for example, yell "fire" in a crowded theater. But suppose there is actually a fire, you would be negligent if you refrained from notifying others and simply left quietly. It's not yelling "fire" that's the problem, it's misrepresenting the case. So by “free speech” we mean ordered speech. Now, of course, beyond whether there’s actually a fire in a theater, we’re immediately going to have disagreements about what “ordered speech” is. But this disagreement is precisely why “Free Speech” must be protected from any strictures, even informal ones.
You might also say: well, the Amendment says “Congress,” it doesn’t say that universities and private companies (say, Twitter) cannot restrict your free speech. But these are in no way private companies; they are organs of the State. And this matters, because it is the complex of Federal money (that is, taxpayer money)—and other benefits, incluing military technological know-how—that made these corporate behemoths what they are, and granted to them the market power they enjoy. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and so on were all originally DARPA projects; and universities, even when donning the “private” moniker, are brimming with Federal money.
What about “Hate Speech”?
But notice something here: you don't have a Right to be protected from free speech, however “hurtful” or “disordered” or "hateful" you feel or think it is. Why? Because such a “right” is precisely the abrogation of free speech. Indeed, it turns speech into a Privilege; and privileges a minority to determine what is acceptable speech.
3. A Litmus Test: all three conditions must be met for something to be a “Right.” Otherwise it’s a “privilege” or a “good”
Does what is claimed to be a “Right” cancel another fundamental Right?
A fundamental Right marks out a personal domain; so it cannot possibly interfere with another fundamental Right.
Freedom from “hateful” or hurtful speech cannot be a Right because Speech Codes cancel out the Right to Free Speech.
Does what is claimed to be a “Right”require other people to DO something or alter or compel their behavior in some way? Is it about controlling other people’s thoughts, actions, and words?
Free speech does not require anyone to alter their behavior. It’s not about controlling anyone else.
Speech Codes require altering everyone else’s speech to conform to some privileged person’s liking (this is called “tolerance”).
Does what is claimed to be a “Right” somehow depend upon the existence of the State? Or is it ontologically prior to the state?
Free speech does not in any way depend upon the state; it is independent of and prior to the State.
Driving on public roads is an example of a privilege that is dependent upon the State; it cannot be a Right.
For example, there cannot be any such thing as a Right to vote.
The privilege to vote is one that depends entirely upon the existence of the State; and even what kind of State it is. Like driving and marriage, it is a privilege subject to certain conditions. Here in the US there are a long list of conditions, including that they are a legal citizen in good standing, and so on.
Every human being has an inalienable Right to free speech, whether or not it is secured. But only an American citizen possesses the privilege to vote in a US election.
III. Is it a Right? A Privilege? Or a Good? Three Controversial Examples
“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
I. Healthcare is neither a Privilege nor a Right. It is a service and a Good provided in the marketplace.
Remember what I said above about a “right to food”? Food is simply a Good. A Good is simply a commodity, product or service that is produced through intellectual and/or physical labor that has value to others and is thereby traded in the private market. Likewise, healthcare is a Good.
Now, let me be clear: everyone should have adequate and even excellent healthcare. But to say that you have a “right to healthcare” is saying something quite different. Even if you are bestowed "free" healthcare—a misleading phrase to be sure—this cannot be a Right.
Let’s consider our litmus test:
Does a “right to healthcare” abrogate or even cancel another fundamental Right? Yes. You cannot have a Right to someone else’s property and labor.
Does a “right to healthcare” require other people to do something? Yes. The government needs to requisition the property and labor of someone who is, in turn, compelled to relinquish.
Does a “right to healthcare” depend upon the existence of the state? Yes. You cannot possibly have such a “right” independent from the State.
It’s an inversion: to say that you have a “right” to someone else’s labor and property is the exact opposite of a Right.
II. Abortion: neither a Right nor a Good
Does a “right to abortion” cancel another fundamental Right? Yes it does. And in support of this, we can appeal to simple common sense and 3 irrefutable facts:
Human life - a person - begins at conception;
The fetus is not the mother’s body (yes, the fetus is radically dependent upon the mother; but that dependency continues well into the first few years, so that argument would justify killing a baby too);
The fetus is undeniably human. It is alive, with a heartbeat and brainwaves; and it is a child that can feel pain, who would have been breastfeeding in a few months.
So it’s an inversion: to say that you have a “right to murder” is the exact opposite of a Right.
“But abortion is a Right because Roe v. Wade!”
Rights are neither created nor destroyed by judges and courts. Moreover, the Courts have often gotten things wrong, sometimes terribly so, as in Dred Scott (which was only effectively overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments after the Civil War.)
III. Gay Marriage: cannot possibly be a Right
By the term “marriage” here, we mean legal marriage, not Holy Matrimony (which cannot be a subject of Rights either) nor natural marriage, where two people voluntarily commit to one another for life, which is no one else’s business whatsoever, and falls squarely within the realm of a fundamental Right.
“Is there a ‘right to [legal} marriage’”?
The answer is “no.” Legal marriage is a privilege. Why? Because it is conditionally bestowed and because legal marriage by definition is ontologically posterior to (or fully dependent upon), the existence of the State. So legal marriage cannot be a Right.
“Okay, legal marriage isn’t a Right. Gotcha. But why can’t homosexuals ‘marry’”?
They are free to enter into marriage. Marriage is a permanent, exclusive union of sexually complimentary persons; of man and woman, husband and wife. That’s what marriage is. That is one of the conditions under which a marriage license is bestowed.
This is not discriminatory and for a simple reason: everyone is equally able to enter into marriage. And for many good reasons—including that we have communal interest in the normal outcome of a marriage; namely, children—we honor that relationship with a special legal and financial status.
But you aren’t seeking out marriage. You’re not interested in seeking out that sort of union. You are interested in another sort of union. And you are free to pursue it. You are free to enter into any adult relationship of your choice.
What, in truth, you’re really asking us to do is to redefine marriage.
“Why can’t we change the definition of marriage?”
First, because it isn’t in your prerogative to go around changing words to fit your worldview. Especially a word that describes one of the most fundamental institutions of mankind; indeed, marriage—and the family that proceeds normally from it—is the foundation of all social order. And such words, and the nature of man and woman, aren’t as arbitrary as you would have us believe. Marriage is rooted in a reality, in the complementarity of man and woman at the physical and spiritual levels, and decidedly not in mere opinion.
Second, if “marriage” were just “an intense, emotional commitment,” then it would have to include any sort of arrangement. And you are perfectly free to make them. But marriage is far more than that.
Third, everyone draws lines between what is and what isn’t a marriage. Even you draw a line somewhere. The trouble is, on your thinking there is no where left to draw it.
For example, what about adults who seek to enter into a legal marriage as 1. a same sex thruple, or 2. an opposite sex quartet, or 3 with an animal or machine?
Let’s say you believe these arrangements are legally marriageable. But in this case you have abolished marriage altogether and the special privileges that attend it. Why? Because if literally nothing falls outside the definition of marriage, then marriage is rendered into a meaningless if not null category.
Or, let’s say you believe these examples would NOT qualify as a valid “legal marriage.” So what principle are you appealing to when pleading your own case (two homosexual men, or two homosexual women), but excluding theirs? Why does it have to be only two people? For that matter, why exclude animals and machines? And why permanent? After all, you could imagine that you could have five-year plans. Or, unions of 12 people and 2 cats and 1 dog and one espresso machine in communes. (“We pledge to be together for 5 years; and we have a “right” to obtain ‘marriage’ benefits.”) You cannot possibly draw a line around your own case without special pleading.
Once again, what you seem to be arguing for, ultimately, is the abolishment of marriage itself. If nothing falls outside the definition of marriage, then marriage is a meaningless category.
Moreover, all this turns marriage into a simple contract between persons. And once again, the logical conclusion of this is the dissolving of the entire concept of marriage. Under a such a view, marriage proper doesn’t exist; it’s just a species of contract law.
“But shouldn’t a gay couple be able to have reciprocal visitation rights at a hospital, end of life decisions, inheritance, etc”?
Yes, and they can and do. They simply have to arrange for it legally. Marriage is not a requisite for these arrangements.
“Okay, fine. But why shouldn’t a gay couple have the right to file a joint tax return?”
Legal marriage is a privilege that is bestowed upon a permanent, exclusive union of sexually complimentary persons, of man and woman. And attendant upon this privilege are certain financial and legal advantages. And the reason for this is simple: we have an interest as a society in the normal outcome of a marriage between a man and a woman: namely, children.
(Now, of course, many people take exception to the simple scientific fact that only a man and a woman can conceive a child. That only a woman can be pregnant. That the union between a man and a woman is special and different. And always has been; and always will be. But there is no point in disputing with such people.)
Conversely, the onus is on you to answer: why should the State care about any of these sorts of non-traditional arrangements? Once again, it seems that what you are ultimately arguing for—unless you are special pleading again—is that we shouldn’t have a special tax code that recognizes marriage. If everyone has a special tax break, how is it a tax break?
“But all that turns on an arbitrary definition of marriage”
Really? In 5,000 thousand years of recorded history there is not one example of a society that allowed, much less celebrated, same sex “marriage.”
Marriage also reflects a deep understanding of the complementarity, biologically and otherwise, of human nature; and one that seems decidedly missing in homosexual relationships. It’s your assertion of a new definition of “marriage —an intense, emotional commitment—that is arbitrary.
Moreover, if you want to limit the extension of “legal marriage” to just 2 homosexuals, then you are the one special pleading without a principled argument that could extend to other people. Which is indeed arbitrary.
The truth is: when you actually examine the concept of “Marriage equality,” like so much the left advocates, it shrivels into a vacuous bumper sticker slogan.
On the traditional view of marriage, everyone is treated equally because all adults can enter into a legal marriage, which is bestowed without prejudice and conditionally to everyone who commits to a complimentary pairing for life. And we do so in part because we have a stake in the outcome, which is to say the resulting children and family.
Homosexuals can get virtually everything what they want legally. But that isn't enough; I suspect what they really want is social approval. Often these conversations go something like this:
And no one has a Right to compel anyone’s approval.
IV. The Subversion of Words & Reason is Always About Power
“It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearers to think he means something quite different.”
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
When words are corrupted into confusion, particularly key words such as Rights and Privileges, a disorder is introduced into the intellect, and therefore the community and public square.
This isn’t something natural and inevitable; it is the work of many people over a long period of time to undermine key concepts and replace them with marxist ones.
One of the ways this has been achieved is through the invention of novel “rights.”
Inventing “rights” out of thin air
For example, in a recent piece in The Atlantic, and in support of his mostly ineffectual arguments against conservative interpretations of the 2nd Amendment (for counter refutations, see here and here), Professor of Constitutional Law Thomas P. Crocker finds a novel “right,” which he calls a “freedom from fear.”
Where does he get this “right”? He cites Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech. Because everyone knows that Rights come from the utterances of Presidents.
Now, to be sure, only a psychopath thinks that children should be fearful. Nevertheless, no one has a “right” to a “freedom from fear.” We might as well endeavor to drink water from a mirage.
Notice how this chimerical and unobtainable “freedom from fear” is cited to modulate or even negate a fundamental Right? And so the actual Right to bear arms for self protection is steadily eroded. And notice how it isn’t a negative right—to be left alone—but has the distinctive marking of a marxist positive right: that you have a right to something.
This penchant for inventing “positive rights” isn’’t new.
Increasingly throughout the 20th century, the cultural marxists mounted a sustained attack on the concept of Rights. The argument went something like this: the traditionally-conceived "negative rights" did not fully address the human situation. Indeed, they argued (ironically) that “negative rights” create and reinforce privilege; they are racist power structures, etc. We needed something else in their view, what they called "positive rights."
For example, a traditional “negative” right, such as property rights, doesn’t properly address poverty; so a “positive right” for food, shelter and healthcare must be “balanced” against this fundamental Right.
As with most cultural marxist assertions, this sounds more or less innocent and even good. That is, until examined.
Three Reasons the cultural marxists have been inventing “rights” out of thin air
1. Because these invented “rights” cancel actual Rights: -> reducing personal sovereignty.
When privileges become “rights”—fake “rights that accrue special advantages to a minority—actual Rights become the privilege of a few, and are effectively cancelled.
Free Speech Codes (based on a “right” to be free from “hate speech”) cancel actual free speech and create a privilege to determine and enforce what is acceptable speech. And speech itself becomes a contingent privilege.
A “right” to healthcare (or food, or shelter, or a “living wage,” etc.) negates property rights and creates a privileged class that has a “right” to the property (goods, services, labor) of others.
Abortion “rights” privileges a person to cancel actual Rights in the form of legalized murder.
A “right” to gay “marriage” cancels the complex and beautiful nature of marriage, and ultimately turns this foundational social institution into a species of personal contract law at best, and nullifies it outright at worst.
A “right” to vote—which, as a “right” (it’s of course argued) needs to be extended to illegal aliens—means the dilution of the actual privilege to vote.
2. Because “positive rights” confuse, divide and weaken the person and community
First, as argued above, “positive rights” abridge or even cancel fundamental Rights, and the protections and securities they afford.
Second, “positive rights” increasingly divide, isolate and even silence the population.
If a “right” is merely an empty word that you append to something you want to possess, what would we expect but a world is that is awash in a proliferation of “rights”? What would the public square look like but an increasingly divisive battle among these competing “rights”? And that is where we are.
For example, speech codes mean that certain groups get to tell other groups what is allowable to say. And increasingly, you may have noticed, what is “allowable” speech is becoming a narrower and narrower category, as everyone clamors for their “right” not to be offended.
Third, “positive rights” insinuate ideologies into the the person, which impair reason and disorient the population
A population that unwittingly absorbs this deceptive language—Orwell’s “ready-made phrases” that can “even think your thoughts for you”—is increasingly susceptible to unconscious political conformity, and the ideologies that animate it.
And this is especially true of the proliferation of “positive rights.” For example: gay “marriage” confuses not only about the nature of marriage, but about the nature of what a “man” or a “woman” is. Imagine being a teenager and not knowing what a “man” or a “woman” is or what gender you are. The disorientation is as obvious as it is damaging to the person and the community.
So “transgenderism” as an ideology—and, of course, the “right” to determine one’s gender (despite biology/science) obligates insurers and taxpayers to foot the bill—further confuses, divides and weakens.
Ideologies Impair Intellects and Reason
In the late fall, I will be exploring this impairment of reason, which includes habituating the intellect to incoherence and embedded contradictions, as well as prioritizing the emotions over reason.
For now, briefly: for example, in my recent piece on the nature of Fascism, and in a section entitled “The Population is becoming impervious to reason and evidence,” I recounted an actual conversation that went more or less like this:
“It’s so great to have our first black Supreme Court Justice.”
But we already have one, no? Justice Thomas? And have you forgotten Thurgood Marshall?
“Yes, but this one will defend women’s rights.”
Oh, I see. I didn’t know that was a function of a Supreme Court Justice? By the way, what does it even mean to “defend women’s rights”?
“You must be a racist bigot.”
Okay. Well, even so: if Justice Jackson doesn’t know and cannot say what a “woman” is, how can she possibly, as you say, “defend” their “rights”?
**Crickets.**
(And in a l’esprit de l'scalier moment, I should have added: if we don’t know what a “woman” is, how do we know that Justice Jackson is our first black woman Supreme Court Justice?)
The manifold confusions are as evident as they are ubiquitous in the general population. Among many things, my interlocutor:
Abrogates the first principles of reason, rendering herself incoherent (more on these principles first articulated by Aristotle in future essays, but for now: she claims, at least implicitly, that she both knows and does not know what the word “woman” means);
Asserts erroneously that there is such thing as “women’s rights” (there cannot be on any rational definition of a Right; a Right applies to all human beings or it isn’t a right, it’s a privilege);
Misconstrues both the nature and the function of the Supreme Court. And presumably, therefore, the other two branches.
And this is an Ivy-league “educated” and apparently mature person.
3. Because “Positive Rights” are the driving force behind the building of the “Progressive” Administrative State and the NWO
Notice how the assertion of these privileges masquerading as “rights” not only reduce your personal sovereignty but always seem to magnify the role of the State? This is by design. This is deliberate and systematic.
A “right” to healthcare (or food, or shelter, or a “living wage”) creates a corresponding obligation on the part of the State, which is all too willing to seize the property of citizens to fulfill this obligation, and this in return for votes. And movement in that direction is rarely reversed. Indeed, it has a way of metastasizing and justifying further expansion because the “rights” proliferate, and because every inevitable failure to meet them is invariably and erroneously interpreted as a failure of the “market.” A failure that that they argue, ironically, can only be solved by further expansion of the Administrative State.
And by appropriating the mantle of “Rights,” the marxists veil their actual agenda (which is a total reordering of social relations) under a conservative appealing and even urgent sounding phrase. A “right” to abortion sounds a bit better than “a privilege to terminate a life.” What innocent can argue with a “right to food” or a “right to a living wage”? Sounds good, no? Even conservatives have been swindled by this verbal appeal in this half-century proliferation of “rights.”
The word “right” lends a kind of authority; but it’s really just a verbal trick. It’s almost as if they believe in black magic. However, just as calling something artificial intelligence doesn’t make it actually intelligent, calling something a “right” doesn’t make it actually a Right.
What is their actual agenda? To remake the whole world in the image of a family; which is another way of understanding what fascism is. To infantilize the population, who are all too glad to vote for more and more “rights” that are actually privileges. To eliminate personal sovereignty. To make you a subject.
In short, the cultural marxists are reengineering the world by reengineering words. Words and reason are no longer common touchstones of truth; and people are increasingly dispersed into warring camps bent on refashioning the world in accordance with their ideologies.
And we can look to the patterns of history to see what all this preludes.
V. Conclusion: “Something Wicked Comes this Way”
“Inquantum vero a ratione recedit, sic dicitur lex iniqua, et sic non habet rationem legis, sed magis violentiae cuiusdam.”
(In so far as [human law] deviates from reason, it is called an unjust law, and has the nature not of law but of violence.)
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ Ia-IIæ, Q 93, A 3
How do we know all of this is ultimately about the abandonment of reason? About power? Because when they discover any opposition to all of this—in anyone’s thoughts, actions or words—they simply abolish and cancel it, and with force if necessary.
Don’t believe me? Try walking into a medical facility without a mask. Or voice your opposition to mRNA “vaccines” or gay “marriage” or abortion or “transgenderism” in public.
When they don’t like what words mean, they CANCEL them by changing their meanings. For example, the word “vaccine.” The CDC didn’t approve of people applying the actual definition to what they were dubbing a “vaccine” and concluding, rationally, that these weren’t vaccines. So what did CDC do? They decided to change the definition of “vaccine”; and within hours every major dictionary on the websphere reflected this new definition.
When they don’t like the actual meaning of a word because it doesn’t serve their purposes they simply change the meaning of the word:
Rights: when they don’t get what they want through its traditional and coherent definition, they cancel your Rights by changing the meaning of the word.
Marriage: when they don’t like what marriage actually means, they cancel marriage by changing the meaning of the word.
Inflation: eliminate anything in the index that is inflating — and voilà, it’s like black magic: there’s no inflation.
Recession: change the definition — and voilà, no recession
Fascism: change the meaning of the word and therefore you won’t see it being created around you.
One hardly needs to say how “Orwellian” and dangerous this is.
When they don’t like what you have to say, they CANCEL you by silencing and labeling you pejoratively. This is what cultural marxists do: they substitute labels for actual argument; and thereby seek to isolate, marginalize and silence whatever or whomever they won’t tolerate.
Labeling for them seems to be a kind of supreme and irrefutable argument.
A HATER and INTOLERANT for opposing anything proffered by cultural marxism/CRT.
A RACIST & WHITE SUPREMACIST for opposing the swarming of national borders ("race" has something to do it how?)
ANTI-SCIENCE for understanding and valuing how actual science works (hint: it's not about some alleged "consensus," etc.)
When they don’t like the outcome of reason and debate, they silence debate. As I recounted in my piece on Fascism, I have a lovely niece who attended the Youth International UN Assembly a few years ago; and afterwards, she announced proudly that:
“the conservatives came with all these facts and arguments and stuff - but, don’t worry, we shouted them down!”
She was beaming; evidently this kind of thing had been not only condoned but actively encouraged in her milieu. Indeed, this sort of moral vanity seems the rule now.
What happens when reason and evidence no longer have purchase on people? Persuasion is replaced by force (“we shouted them down”). And eventually violence of one kind or another.
When they don’t get what they want from laws or the Constitution, they abolish the plain language. If you don’t like what the 2nd Amendment means—it’s plain language—you simply read into the language what you want it to say. What is that but the abrogation of the Rule of Law? In favor of the rule by a man in a robe?
When they don’t like the outcome of institutions and processes, they call for abolishing them. For example, in wake of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding Roe v. Wade has launched an avalanche of calls to abolish the Supreme Court; violent threats against the justices, etc.
And to top it all off, they call all this “Tolerance” - and ironically, label anyone who won’t go along with their ideology as “Intolerant.”
*****
We are currently witnessing violence—of all kinds, including physical—against anyone who remains rooted in reason and what words actually mean, anyone who refuses to comply with their arbitrary dictates, or conform to their confusion.
What could be more “wicked” than systematically and forcibly dividing, subduing, and silencing a people? And their communities? And families?
If history is a reliable guide, such a dynamic—unless stood up to, and before it’s too late—seldom if ever ends well.
Something wicked this way comes. And its name is “genocide.”
Coda: “A republic if you can keep it”
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” James McHenry, journal entry, September 18, 1787
“An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a Republic.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817.
If you can keep it. The problem is that the survival of a Republic depends upon an informed and educated citizenry; one that is thereby immune to demagogues and the ideologies they peddle.
But many of our fellows citizens aren’t even aware that we live in a Constitutional Republic. And how can they stand up for what they aren’t aware of?
The cultural marxists keep insisting that we live in a “democracy.” Once feared and abhorred, “democracy” is somehow now a term of approbation. And yet, perhaps we are living in a democracy now after all; indeed, at this very moment in history, we do seem to be witnessing democracy’s tendency to degenerate into demagoguery and tyranny.
Moreover, as I’ve argued in this essay, the cultural marxists have disoriented our population about very basic things: from the nature of marriage to the biological basis of gender, from the nature of a Right to the reality of a violent act veiled as “healthcare.” Such a people—who seem increasingly unable to discern the truth about anything—do not resist tyranny very well, if at all.
Lenin once said that he would line the urinals in Moscow with gold. I take that to mean: the Bolsheviks would rid themselves of any independent measurement of the currency, and therefore their actual economic performance. Which is precisely what gold does: provide an independent measurement, and one that is based in reality.
And this is in part what reason does and what words do: provide common touchstones of truth.
What the cultural marxists fear most is a people rooted—fiercely, intransigently—in words and reason. If their deception starts with refashioning words, our first order of business is to reclaim those words. What is needed is a properly formed and educated population.
We could do worse than start here: requiring of ourselves and others that we say what we mean. And mean what we say.
The scenario has been war-gamed a number of times by the Army War College, the Pentagon, etc. And it would be worse than anything we have seen yet, far worse than the American Civil war. And this time it would be global.
See, Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary.