The Hidden Bias of Language
23rd May 2020
Years ago I learned that when the Scottish Enlightenment said they loved “Equality” and when the French Philosophes echoed that same sentiment, they were talking past each other. Hume and Locke wanted a voluntary equality of opportunity, while the French wanted a compelled equality of result. But there is no indication that either side understood that the same word meant different things across the English Channel. As a result, it took much longer for the rest of the world to understand the intellectual horror that was the French Revolution.
This is why people go to war over the definitions of words (‘gay marriage’ is a good case in point). Those who control what words mean wind up controlling how people talk about something which in turn results in control over how people think about things. Consider the Trayvon Martin case and the attempt by the media to tag the shooter as a ‘white Hispanic’.
The Left understands this at a deeper level than the Right, which is why they end up winning more often than not. The intellectual damage of smears like ‘price gouging’, ‘black market’, ‘windfall profit’, ‘pink slime’, and innumerable other tendentious terms is almost incalculable.