“For a brute he isn’t doing badly, is he? They’re playing under two sets of rules. For Kinnan words have meaning and for the others, they don’t. But the latter is only an intellectual fantasy, and it comes at a price. Where words have no meaning, evil becomes very difficult to recognize as it sits down to dine.”
One of my favorite observers of history is George Orwell. He once expressed the sentiment that whoever owned the language owned debate. Many conservatives have cowered before the accurate use of language and gutlessly bow down before the god of obfuscation. I’m not advocating vulgarities or obscenities, but to me the false use of language is even more offensive.
Kinnan is also one of my favorite characters in the book. He is a thug but makes no moralistic pretense that he is anything otherwise. In my circle of acquaintances is an astonishing number of people who advocate Stalinism but couch it in the most unctuous moralistic drivel you have ever heard. They truly believe that collectivism is the most “moral” dynamic.
I wonder if the 'assault weapons' ban would have passed if we had used the correct term 'defense weapon' instead.
Impenitent use of this term may have shifted the perception of the public and caused the AWB advocates to try to explain their reason for using the term assault.
Unfortunately we will probably get to test my theory before too long.