OPINION: What’s in a Word

The White House and Congress’s ideologues are determined to turn us into robots who adhere to bogus principles about who we are, what we need, and how we live our lives.  At the risk of offending those in the new regime, which seeks to undermine America’s ideal as designed by our Founding Fathers, they are drunk with power and, in the end, they are determined to lead us all down the road to perdition. 

We need to thank God that we still have the right — for the time being — to express our discontent, to call them out, and to hopefully put our ship of state on course again.

There’s chaos and mayhem on our southern border as hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants break their way into our country each and every day at the invitation of the new powers that be.  The Communist Chinese want to undermine our country and our lives.  Meanwhile, our nation is being attacked from within as the Antifa and radical leaders of Black Lives Matter organizations relentlessly threaten life and limb in order to bring divide our country and subvert our Constitutional democratic republic.

So, what are the bureaucrats in Washington doing about it?  They are giving us a lesson in semantics.  For example, the Federal Reserve Board is now telling its employees that they must be more thoughtful in the ways they express themselves.  For example, some people might be offended if you use the term Founding Fathers, so why not just call them Founders instead.  Why?  Perhaps it is because mothers may take offense.

Aren’t these guys supposed to be dealing with pressing financial issues such as inflation, interest rates, etc.?  That’s the way it was in the good old days when real men and real women were running things.  Apparently, the people in charge [I must be careful not to trigger a gender alert] are more concerned with promoting the kind of “new-speak” that would drive George Orwell into a state.

So, why is the Fed doing this?  In their words, “Bias-free language recognizes diversity and avoids stereotyping, demeaning, or excluding people on the basis of gender, race, ethnic group, religion, age, ability/disability, or sexual orientation.”  So, they suggest trying “to avoid words and phrases that may be considered offensive, pejorative, or prejudiced (whether consciously or unconsciously), as these can distract your audience from the ideas/information you’re trying to convey.”

But, it’s not just the Fed that has introduced a “word check” in its agency.  It’s happening throughout the new administration.  The White House, for example, made an important edit in the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, doing away with the unseemly word “alien” and replacing it with the word noncitizen. 

When that happened, Mark Krikorian took umbrage.  Mark is the head of the Center for Immigration Studies, and he said: “The war against the word ‘alien’ is a continuation of this effort to destigmatize illegal immigration that started in the mid-1970s. This is in a sense the culmination of that process.”