Almost nobody knows the academic definitions of most political ideologies, they’re just all cable news buzzwords now. If you took a sample of the population I’d be surprised if even 5% could give you the correct academic definitions for the vast majority of political ideology terms.
And so we can choose to act towards restoring definitions to words with important meanings, so that we become capable of discussing the things they signify again.
If we don’t use words as they mean, but instead use unorthodox terminology, then we allow the significance of such words to be lost, with no standardized alternatives in common use - i.e., no alternatives that are any more clear than the original word.
There is a war on language. It’s primarily a subset of the class war. We can surrender, or fight what is probably the simplest fight of our life: We can use words as they were meant to be used.
And the more we do it, the more others will follow. Knowledge is a box that cannot be closed. And knowledge is an important ally to the average person whether they realize it or not. (Yet the war will still to rage on, as not all who misuse words are doing so by accident.)
Almost nobody knows the academic definitions of most political ideologies, they’re just all cable news buzzwords now. If you took a sample of the population I’d be surprised if even 5% could give you the correct academic definitions for the vast majority of political ideology terms.
And so we can choose to act towards restoring definitions to words with important meanings, so that we become capable of discussing the things they signify again.
If we don’t use words as they mean, but instead use unorthodox terminology, then we allow the significance of such words to be lost, with no standardized alternatives in common use - i.e., no alternatives that are any more clear than the original word.
There is a war on language. It’s primarily a subset of the class war. We can surrender, or fight what is probably the simplest fight of our life: We can use words as they were meant to be used.
And the more we do it, the more others will follow. Knowledge is a box that cannot be closed. And knowledge is an important ally to the average person whether they realize it or not. (Yet the war will still to rage on, as not all who misuse words are doing so by accident.)
These weren’t egghead concepts back when we had a labor movement large enough to support a labor press.