The War on Words is a hot topic in mainstream conservative news outlets.  We protest that words are being twisted and redefined in the English language.  When words are twisted, everything in life changes.  Meaning, emotions, understanding, conversations, and life itself takes on a different color.  What is it like when a society loses its original definitions of words and redefines everything it knows?  What happens when a ruling elite takes control of society and the words they are allowed to use?

The Founding Fathers feared this would happen and put safeguards in place to protect Americans from facing such atrocities, but today, those safeguards are being cast away, allowing media to redefine American life.  This is just the beginning of the war on words.

The Giver: A Dystopian Preview Of What Life Could Be Like

The Giver is a dystopian sci-fi book where a small community of people lives in a bubble (literally) with no pain, no color, and no memories.  They only remember their individual lives.  One man, called the Giver, holds all the memories of societies before them, wars, marriages, colors, and friendships.  

Jonas is a young boy chosen to receive the memories from the aging Giver, and he rises to the occasion of restoring the memories that are lost and giving them back to the people in his community.

Within that book, there is a phrase that I always remember: the dystopian society Jonas lives in always stresses the need for “precision of language”.  

“He [Jonas] had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie.  It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech.  Once, when he had been a Four [four years old], he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, ‘I’m starving.’

“Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision.  He was not starving, it was pointed out.  He was hungry.  No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving.  To say ‘starving’ was to speak a lie.  An unintentional life, of course.  But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered” (Lowry, p. 70-71).

The book goes on to describe Jonas’ journey as he began to realize what it was like to have emotions, memories, and pain.  He sees color.  He experiences sledding (something no one does in his flat, gray, dystopian society.

Precision of language was required in that society to live and interact with other people.

Today, precision of language in America is almost impossible but still required.  You say the word “marriage”, and people wonder whether you mean “same-sex marriage”, “gay marriage”, “heterosexual marriage”, or some other strange marriage orientation.

You say the word “diverse”, and people wonder whether you mean racial diversity, sexual diversity, workplace diversity, skin color quotas, or true diversity (acceptance of people no matter what their race is).

Read More About Woke Diversity Here!

As Michael Knowles says, “What’s in a word?  Everything.”

Freedom of Conscience: Words Shape How We Think

John Whitehead writes for The Blaze, “How do you change the way people think?  You start by changing the words they use.”

Police states are the mainstay of totalitarian, communist countries.  Soviet Russia had them.  Nazi Germany had them.  North Korea has them.  China uses them all the time.  They do more than just wage war on words.  They can come in the form of artificial intelligence, like China uses, as well as restricting internet and social media use and the use of a social credit system.

These are dystopian, communist, totalitarian tactics to control every citizen within their reach.

I used to think this would never come to America.  Surely it couldn’t!  We’re the land of the free!

But President Biden has been widely praised for a “new” proposal “to create a health-focused federal agency modeled after DARPA […] to ‘end cancer’” (Mercola, 2021).

What does this have to do with police states and twisting words??  Hang with me, I’m getting there.

Whitney Webb, writing on Mercola, the website of a leading heart health doctor (Dr. Mercola), says, “Far from ‘ending cancer’ in the way most Americans might envision it, the proposed agency [that the Biden Administration has proposed] would merge ‘national security’ with ‘health security’ in such a way as to use both physical and mental health ‘warning signs’ to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur.  Such a system is a recipe for technocratic ‘pre-crime’ organization with the potential

Side Note:  Just to be clear, this new health tracking system is not a new phenomenon.  The same organization behind this health DARPA proposed the idea to President Trump in 2019 but seems to be gaining traction under the new Biden administration (Mercola, 2021).

The technology would also be associated with similar technology to predetermine whether an individual is having violent thoughts, and that individual could be arrested before he or she becomes a serial killer or active shooter (Mercola, 2021).

The U.S. Constitution & Freedom of Conscience

The U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans the right to Freedom of Conscience in the First Amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;…”

James Madison originally proposed even stronger verbiage that said, “The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, […] nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed” (Constitution Annotated).

Artificial Intelligence That Monitors American Thoughts Is Unconstitutional (and Immoral)

Although political figures with totalitarian leanings may be drooling over an AI system that can monitor every American’s thoughts and desires, this is unconstitutional.  Americans are guaranteed the right to have any religion, to think any way they want, and to live any way they want.  There is a justice system in place for those whose ethics and actions conflict with the Constitution.  But just because someone is having violent thoughts does not predetermine them to be a murderer.  It is a sin to allow those violent thoughts, but a government that can arrest you on the basis of your thoughts is wrong.

I think we can all see where that could go.  Prisons would be full, that’s for sure.

The War On Words

But now that words have been twisted to mean something entirely opposite of their original meaning, we can’t have logical conversations with each other or even understand everything our government says because their definition of a word might mean something different from our definition of a word.

Postmodernism and Relativism:  A Christian Response to Anti-God Philosophy

“Words have, essentially, two meanings. The literal definition of a word is called [its] ‘denotation,’ but words also can convey feelings and emotions, and we call the sense of feeling or emotion […] its ‘connotation’” (Global Liberty Media).  

Mainstream media has twisted donations or words and confused them with connotations (and vice versa), making it difficult to understand each other.

Steve Feinstein writes, “Political advocacy groups, politicians, news people, and educators employ single words or short phrases that are euphemisms, with the intention of influencing voters’ perceptions or turning a given circumstance in personal financial advantage” (American Thinker).

How the War on Words is Fueling the War on Freedom of Conscience

Try this thought exercise by Wallace Garneau: close your eyes, tilt your head back, and let your mind be a blank slate.  Now… try thinking without using words or forming them in your mind.

Did you do it?

It’s impossible to think without words, which is why freedom of conscience (freedom of thought) is so important.  When the government tells us a bill is progressive, do they mean it’s progressive as in more unborn children will be killed, and we’ll pay for that with our tax dollars?  Or do they mean we’re progressing as we build more roads in our infrastructure?  Are we saving trees?  

If a bill is diverse, are we putting more barriers in place that restrict white men from the job force, or are we really putting barriers up against white supremacy?  And, for that matter, what is white supremacy?  Is it white people being prejudiced against black people on the basis of skin rather than character?  Or is it corporations being prejudiced against white people on the basis of their skin because the corporations haven’t met their skin color quota yet?

Conclusion

I think you can see just how topsy turvy the English language has become with its manipulation.  

Michael Knowles says, “All this manipulation of language has paid off for the left, because whoever controls the words controls the culture.

“Don’t believe me?  Just try using plain language instead of the left’s politically correct jargon.  But be careful.  Use ‘the wrong words’ and you might lose your job, your home, and your reputation.

“The culture war is largely a war of words.  Right now, the left is winning.  You can see the consequences everywhere: in politics, in education, in media.

“It’s time to fight back.  We should not cede another syllable.

What’s in a word  Everything.”