Who Controls the Language?

By John Mallon

This quote is attributed to Joseph Stalin, Josef Goebbels and assorted other tyrants: “He who controls the language rules the world.” Many other such quotes reveal with remarkable candor how tyrants think, and we ought to learn from them to avoid the horrible bloodbaths of the past. Another quote, attributed to Hitler and others: “If you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it.” Or, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

I am deeply suspicious of neologisms, that is, newly coined words floated into the

lexicon that are often snapped up by those who want their speech to reflect the

latest trends. They tend to replace perfectly good words that have served well

for centuries. For example, have you noticed that everything now is a “center”?

Instead of hospitals, we have health centers. Instead of schools, we have learning

centers. Instead of chanceries, we have pastoral centers, and one of my

favorites, “sanitary landfill and recycling center.” I'll never forget how years ago

my brother and I were driving into one such place with a load of trash, and upon

seeing the sign, he turned to me and said, “Whatever happened to 'dump'?”

Well, these seem harmless enough. But I recall it caught my notice when a big

deal was made in my workplace during the 1980s. The personnel office was

changing its name to “human resources.” On the surface it might seem these

unnecessary name changes were supposed to reflect a certain 'sensitivity' in a

society ever more under orders from the invisible but ever-present sensitivity

police to always wear its 'sensitivity' on its sleeve. But it seemed dehumanizing

to me. I would much rather be considered a person than a mere “resource.” With

the vague miasma of euphemism in the air today, “resources” is frequently used

when it seems impolite to say money.

Last August I was hanging out in the gallery of the United Nations General

Assembly with my pal Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights

Institute. A young lady sitting next to him said, “Who's that?” indicating a Catholic

cardinal down on the floor. Austin snapped, “That's Cardinal Arinze from Africa,

he's on the short list to be pope.” I was sitting behind them, and they are lucky I

wasn't drinking something or I would have done a spectacular spit take

drenching them both. I shrieked, “Oh my God! I can't believe you just said that!

That's ridiculous!”

I didn't mean Cardinal Arinze, who would make a fine pope if God so willed, but

Austin's use of the term “short list,” which magically appeared out of nowhere

among pundits during the election season. Austin looked into the eyes of the

young woman and said, ‘I love jargon. I love it.’ I said, “I hate it! Because it often

is employed to deceive rather than communicate clearly, or make others feel

inadequate while you're in with the In Crowd.”

Worst of all, of course, and most illustrative of my point are the terms “gender”

and “choice.” Gender is an ideological term to mainstream artificial sexual

ideology into the culture. Depending on who you talk to there are five or even

seven ‘genders’ — and counting.

In nature there are only two sexes. The generation that demanded their cereal

be all natural pumps large doses of artificiality into their politics and sexuality.

Sex is better than gender. The term “choice” attempts to apply God-given free

will to a thoroughly evil act of murder.

So one death is a tragedy. Forty million is a statistic, or in other words, tyranny.

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This article originally appeared in The Daily Oklahoman on April 20, 2001 and is reprinted with permission.