The Power Of The English Language When Words Become Weapons

By Michael J. Carroll

POSTED: November 08, 1997

(Philadelphia Inquirer)

Pity the poor liberals, the seven or eight still out there. They never get a break. I think I first heard liberal used as a dirty word back around 1968. That was the year the most Americans died in Vietnam, the year the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were murdered. It was quite a year, 1968.

It was the political left in those days that spat out the word liberal. The left blamed liberals for not taking action needed to end the war, racism and poverty.

My, how times have changed. Liberal is a dirty word again, but now it is the right wing leading the attack. The L-word now carries baggage similar to that which communist did in 1950s America, Catholic in the England of 1700 or Jew and Moor in 16th-century Spain. The right has stuck liberals with responsibility for everything from drug use to out-of-wedlock and teenage pregnancy. I've not heard liberals blamed for El Nino yet, but I bet it's coming.

It is time for the right, which has been in the driver's seat for a while now, to take a little heat. To hit one of their favorite themes, it is time to take responsibility for their actions. To quote one of my high school teachers, ``If you take credit for the sunshine, you have to take the blame for the rain.''

Let's look at the right's environmental policy. As far as I can tell, it consists of giving away federal land or selling it off at fire sale prices.

The broader policy involves dumping people onto the trash heap. Poor people? Minorities? Forget them; they're gone. Gay people? Feminists? Don't even think about them; good-bye. Same for kids: Cut medical benefits, dump them in underfunded schools and, if they step out of line, try them in court as adults. And as to working people, who, contrary to ultraconservative mythology, are often poor people as well, to the dump with them. The fact that many of them voted right will not save them. It just means they are not called awful names en route to the landfill. Their jobs are gone. Their unions are gone. Their health insurance is gone. Sacrificed to a fantasy that the free market can never do wrong.

The elderly? To the dump with them, but be careful. Lots of them vote. And easy on the rich ones. Sick people? To the dump. Cut a little insurance here, some prescriptions there. The market will handle them one way or the other. Just be careful which diseases you pick on

And take the selection of federal judges, a little-noticed ritual with tremendous impact on our lives. The right tars anyone to the left of its darling, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, with the L-word. If judicial nominees are much less extreme than Thomas, the right response is to affix the L-word to their forehead and reject them. End of debate. End of story.

And the best part: No criticism allowed. The minute someone disagrees, the L-word albatross is tied around his necks and he is silenced. Those are the rules of the political game these days. Once the word comes out, the critic loses all credibility and all rights to speak. Good deal if you are on the right.

The present, compliant occupant of the White House (in 1997) played right into the hands of the far right. In his first term, he feared sending, and refused to send to the Senate for confirmation, anyone who would draw any significant opposition. He used the shoo-in standard: If you were not a shoo-in, you were not considered. As a result, the opposition closed in and changed the rules. Previously acceptable mainstream candidates were declared out of the mainstream. Too liberal to be on the bench. And why not push as far right as you can when there is no opposition? Profiles in Courage. Anybody squawks, call them liberals as well. They'll shut up quick.

re is a simple proposal. Use words like liberal within a light year or two of their real meaning. Don't use them as weapons to kill thinking and shut down all discussion. And a little advice to the non-rightwing (notice how I danced around the L-word), presidents included: Show a little courage now and then.

Michael J. Carroll