Seventy years ago in June 1949 George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. On June 7, 2019, the day prior to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s 70th anniversary, The Guardian, the United Kingdom’s leading socialist newspaper, announced: “Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses to describe abortion bans.” What follows in this pronouncement would have … Read more
On October 12, 1870, a good man closed his eyes on this world. Although loved by many, and respected by most at the time of his death, history has since laden Robert E. Lee with abuse and hatred. The change has been long coming, but Dylann Roof’s 2015 racist shooting raised disgust to a fever … Read more
I always recall the statement by the renowned international anti-euthanasia activist Rita Marker that “verbal engineering precedes social engineering.” Even a quick examination of current controversies in the socio-political arena provides abundant confirmation of this. One obvious current example is how the defenders of virtually uninhibited immigration or open borders choose readily to ignore that … Read more
Individual Americans have enjoyed more personal freedom, individual rights, and collective liberty than most, if not all, other civilizations in history. Yet we are living in a time when freedom, rights, and liberty have been so thoroughly redefined and distorted that we struggle to communicate with each other. A faithful Catholic uses the same words … Read more
Over the past few years, proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been pushing the American Medical Association (AMA) to amend its Code of Ethics as it pertains to the practice. In 2016, a delegation from Oregon asked the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) to recommend that the AMA adopt a neutral stance … Read more
This will sound like a humorous question, but it is one I have turned over in my mind for months now, and one that cultural conservatives and practicing Christians will eventually have to confront: how much should we care about pronouns? Put differently, should we care that one individual wants to be called “they”? Or … Read more
“Sticks and stones may break my bones / but names will never hurt me.” So goes the old children’s nursery rhyme. We know, of course, that the claim is not exactly true: CBS produced a documentary in 2011 about the effects of bullying in a digital age, “Words Can Kill.” What is less talked about … Read more
Fair is foul and foul is fair at the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV). Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the PAV, recently redefined the term “life” for the Catholic Church, stating that the PAV will now refocus its pro-life mission to include issues of migration, arms control, poverty and the environment. He suggested that to … Read more
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves…” (Gen 11:4) As a small child the tale of Babel’s tower seemed a large story, one filled with men who were wicked and a god who was powerful. … Read more
One of the most common attitudes I encounter with today’s college students is a kind of blasé non-judgmentalism—or, worse, a passively nihilistic relativism. They are reluctant to label any behavior or belief bad, even if, in the most extreme thought experiments, it involves killing innocents. This attitude seems to get worse every year; it’s as … Read more
The new transgender revolutionaries would like to go beyond bra burning and accusations of patriarchy. They would like to change language itself—particularly pronouns—and abolish “he” and “she” and to replace it with “they”—or other inventive pronouns, to indicate anyone of any gender. While this has not been seriously institutionalized in western countries, transgender revolutionaries would … Read more
The great Thomist Josef Pieper penned a short book in the late seventies on how totalitarian regimes use words to gain control over the masses: Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power. Pieper’s treatise came to mind as I read that the Canadian government is no longer going to refer to ISIS as ISIS (that … Read more