OPINION:
Science fiction author Philip K. Dick once said, “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
Of all the strategies presently used by Democrats and their puppets in the establishment media, the bastardization of words is perhaps the most pernicious.
Take, for example, the words green and gay, change and choice, male and female, moral and immoral, justice and injustice, compassion, care and tolerance. The list goes on and on.
There was a time when all thinking human beings understood that “green” was simply a color and not some political agenda, that “gay” meant happiness and had nothing to do with illicit sex, that some “change” was good and some was bad, that freedom of “choice” did not give you the freedom to choose to kill your youngest children, that men were “male” and women were “female,” and that heterosexual monogamy in marriage was “moral” and everything else was not.
Yes, there was a time when we all understood these things, when we all knew that words meant something; a time where it was self-evident what the definition of “is” is and that changing and manipulating the meaning of words is called something: lying.
There was a time when nearly everyone understood that being exclusive in the name of inclusion was duplicitous, that marching for tolerance while shouting “I can’t tolerate your intolerance” was hypocrisy and that chanting “Love trumps hate” while saying you absolutely “hate those hateful people” was rightly seen as nonsense.
This self-refuting use of words is the left’s most predictable trait today. It drives and underlies everything they say and do. Whether it be taxes, education, domestic policies or international affairs, it seems Democrats can’t open their mouths without contradicting themselves at every turn.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, is the most recent poster child for such self-deception.
“Minnesota has shown the world how to protect democracy and take care of our neighbors,” she said earlier this month. “We will continue to stand up for justice. … We take care of our own.”
Justice? Care? Decency? Protecting your own? What about justice for the 3,364 undocumented children whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement just identified as having been forced into prostitution at the hands of Minnesota’s cartels? How is it “just,” Ms. Klobuchar, for you and thousands of others to stand in the way of these federal officers as they attempt to rescue thousands of little boys and girls from this living hell? Are these children not your “own”? Are they not your “neighbors”?
How about the 400,000 children nationwide who have been trafficked over the past 10 years and are presently suffering a similar fate? Is impeding the efforts of the Trump administration to find them and help them what you would call “decent” and “caring”? How “protected” do you think these girls and boys feel right now?
Then there are the sexual assaults and murders of young women across the country. These include Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five who was raped and killed while hiking in Maryland, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus, Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl who was abducted, sexually assaulted and strangled to death in Houston, Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old woman with autism who was raped, bound and strangled in Aberdeen, Maryland, and many more.
All these killings took place in the past few years and apparently align with what nearly every Democrat in the country now calls “concern, compassion, decency, caring for their own, and loving their neighbors.”
More than 2,600 years ago, the Prophet Isaiah warned, “Woe unto him who calls darkness light and light darkness, bitter sweet and sweet bitter.” The biblical moral here is simple: Turning the meaning of words upside down and using them to describe their opposite is always wrong and always brings judgment. It will bring the judgment of men against one another, the judgment of God against men or both.
If we don’t stop drinking this Kool-Aid, if we don’t start pointing out that these would-be emperors have no clothes, if we don’t start calling lies what they truly are, then we may soon find we are controlled by people such as Ms. Klobuchar, who apparently can’t tell the difference between good and evil.
As George Orwell wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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