WHAT'S A WORD WORTH?
Don A. Bright
“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 the words.” Philip K. Dick (1928–82), U.S. science fiction writer.
In the beginning chapter of his signally important work, 1984, George Orwell describes the view from the apartment of his main character, Winston Smith. Dominating the view is the Ministry of Truth, “an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party”:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
When I first read those words I laughed. Nobody would believe those lies, I thought. Well, I was wrong. In the first place they were not “lies” by the truest definition of the word “lie”. Secondly, they were of a much more insidious nature than lies; they were instead, a gangrenous attack on the entire plenum of civilization. Words define truth. To lie without bastardizing this mandate is one thing. Changing the very soul of words in order to defend the indefensible is quite another.
SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Earnest Hemingway once said, “All our words from loose using have lost their edge.” Today, I might go a little further than Hemingway did. I think all of our words, from loose using, have lost their worth.
What, after all, is a word worth? And does that worth have moral quality? I'm old enough to think the answer to the latter question is yes. They used to. Words, to have any worth at all, must have defining limits and a purpose. Today we have stretched those limits and that purpose to
such a dishonorable degree that the moral use of them is laughed at. Like a lot of things in this country today, words are becoming relative. Some examples:
A school district in Florida was forced to give students proficiency tests, the letter grades of which were to be sent to the state for monitoring. The school board, knowing full well that they had not measured up and would lose funds, simply changed the meaning of the letter grade. Did they find it necessary to honor the moral meaning of the words "pass" or "fail"? Well, you tell me. Their decision was to give any student that makes a score of fifty-one or better an "A". Forty and above became a "B", thirty-somethings are "C's" and so on. Can you tell me, then, the moral meaning of a grade of "A".
We have recently seen that our business leaders are guilty of the same abuse of words. I am
not a student of accounting but if I understand what some of the business leaders are doing now in "accepted" accounting practices it goes something like this. Company "A" has borrowed a lot of money from bank "B"; enough money to have a severe negative impact on the bottom line. What to do? "Aha", says some graduate of Harvard Business School, "I got it. If we someday pay that debt off, we'll have more money for bonuses. So, let's call the debt an asset!" I ask you again, then, to tell me the moral meaning of the word "asset".
Our politicians tell us that the last thing they want to do is take money from the Social Security "Trust Fund". They already have. All of it. There is not a penny in it and they know it. They have used every bit of it to fund non-social security government programs and replaced the
money with IOU's. They call these IOU's an asset. Sound familiar? Who is responsible for the IOU's? We are of course. My, God... is there no moral meaning to the word "trust"?
When we hear a politician say "those tax cuts will all go to the rich" it is easy to believe. Most of the time, however, that politician is purposely misusing the word rich. In general usage the word rich means those with great wealth. In government-speak "rich" means anybody not below the poverty line. If everybody is "rich" what is the moral meaning of the word "poor"?
When congress has on the books a planned 10% increase for one of its programs or agencies and some more conservative members try to hold the increase to 8% it's erroneously called a "cut". "We can't afford to cut that program!", the liberals will shout. So, in Washington, if you increase funding for something it can be called a cut. I had a discussion with a person on the staff of Governor Huckabee once and when the topic got around to government spending the person told me that the governor had cut spending by the state since he took office. When I pressed the representative on what he meant by “cut” by asking if the state is spending less now on a dollar for dollar basis then when the governor took office he said yes because the governor had reduced the amount of increases in some areas. Huh? When did the meaning of the word increase become interchangeable with the word cut? So the word "increase" is morally relative and means nothing.
As our individual tax burden has become so confiscatory, the word "tax" is seldom used by embarrassed politicians who want more of our money. They refer to new taxes as "revenue enhancement". Another common abuse of language that is more and more becoming the norm is to change the word tax to "fee". The citizens of Arkansas have the constitutional right to vote on any tax increase. When our elected leaders go to such lengths to use the word "fee" instead of "tax" is it just a grammatical slip? Of course not. It is a deliberate misuse of language to disenfranchise the citizens. You see, we taxpayers don't have any say in "fee" increases. How long do you think it will be before property taxes will called fees?
Is this moral equivalency in our language bad for us as a country? I think it is. If, of course, I'm correct in what I think the meaning of the word “is” is.