The left love twisting words

Has conservative thinking been too complacent about important English words being hijacked to obfuscate their meaning? After all, George Orwell warned that an attack on language is an attack on the truth of things. With his extraordinary prescience, he also said that the further society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.

A prime example is the nonsense of transgenderism, the claim that given drastic medication or physical mutilation – or even because an individual simply claims this –he/she has now changed sex. Those pointing out this is biologically impossible are berated by our hierarchies  and accused of hate speech – indicative of a great madness permeating the West.

Penalties also come swiftly for brave individuals who refuse to misuse the English language by endorsing grammatically wrong pronouns – simply because some deluded or mischievous individual has decided to hijack them. Teachers can lose their jobs and pupils be suspended from schools because of declining to support this perverseness.

Orwell pointed out, too, that political language is designed to twist the meaning of words. Among a cluster of these is the word ‘progressive’, from its Latin origin meaning to advance, to proceed, to go forward. But to what? Why have we allowed a word with a positive-sounding meaning to be captured by what is basically regressive – cultural Marxism, i.e. communism, changing its modus operandi  to a pretence of social progress. Its pervasive attack on all our institutions has the truth of things as its chief target – and it is dedicated to undermining the family, the most important nucleus of any society.

Very much part of this is the heavy promotion of the LGBT community now recruiting in our schools, and demanding drag queens  be allowed to propagandise children in our libraries, where children’s areas now prominently display books persuading them that same-sex relationships are fine and normal. In my home city, a grandmother recently pointed out to an irate librarian that, in her view, such books were unsuitable for children. The police were immediately called, but refused to lay any charges. One such children’s book, titled Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships has a crude sketch of a face seemingly abandoned to ecstasy.

Our long-infiltrated Ministry of Education, responsible for the shocking decline in standards of education, has helpfully provided for teachers a series of videos to be shown to school children. These feature adolescents their own ages invoking their first sexual intercourse, urging their peers not to worry, but just to go for it. For anal penetration, they suggest using a suitable lubricant. This advice was also followed at a local college where the girls said they had to offer anal penetration because the boys were unwilling to risk pregnancy, or use condoms. Social progress?

Why today’s continual infliction of so-called sex education classes throughout every successive year in our schools? How different from the one-only, sex education class once thought necessary to teach the actual facts of enabling a child to be conceived, previously offered by schools in mother/daughter or father/son classes – or, alternatively – where parents were invited to attend beforehand to give their consent. Parents are now denied this right, finding it almost impossible to preview what their child will have inflicted on them.

Although there is still the right for a child to be withdrawn from sex education lessons, this is not widely known, and even denied in some schools. No wonder oversexualised children are now so much at risk. At school balls, the plunging neckline of some girls’ dresses must make it very difficult for their partners – similarly to young women’s provocative G-string bikinis or thongs now attracting complaints from parents taking children to swimming pools.

Perhaps no greater example of the lack of respect now granted to families is the shocking move to compel women who have just given birth to leave hospital within three or four hours. I recall from some time back that mothers who gave birth in Wellington hospital were offered a box of groceries – if they would leave hospital the same day. How appalling, after those often wearying nine months, with now no chance to rest – and often other children needing to be looked after at home.

I also recall my mother’s experience, when it was common for women to remain in hospital for up to a fortnight to rest, to recover from difficult births and receive support before leaving with wearying, even if rewarding, months ahead. Later it was acceptable for willing women to go home in a few days, but with consideration given when more time was needed to recuperate. Can we regard it as progressive in the real meaning of the word that exhausted mothers are now discharged shortly after giving birth?

As for the childless, former New Zealand Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark boasting about making it possible for more women to get out into the workforce. Many women today grieve because after six months of home support, the financial pressures of trying to maintain a family home – difficult now even with two breadwinners – means tired babies and toddlers must be woken and driven to often understaffed daycare facilities before a mother has to turn up for work, collecting them at the end of the day. So much for ‘progressive’ care.

The lazy hijacking of other words, such as élites – now leaving no alternative to describe those genuinely deserving to be described as the best in their fields – can be easily avoided by naming what they really are: hierarchies of dominating individuals. Similarly with gay, as a substitute for homosexual, although there is little evidence that today’s vociferous minorities who deviate from heterosexual relationships show evidence of being particularly happy. While their individual choices must be respected, why these should be regarded as a source of pride – so that we have the Gay Pride banner to seemingly salute – is questionable.

Equally problematic is the word woke, its meaning unintelligible to so many. Abandoning it and substituting groupthink – left-wing identity politics – would provide more transparency about the real attack on the values which traditionally underpinned our society. Instead, by embracing what Orwell called Newspeak, we are arguably helping the regressive Left to cloud our social decline.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/whats-progressive-about-social-decline/

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