Aphorisms


There's nothing so bad, that adding government can't make it worse. -- The Immigrant

Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. -- Ronald Reagan

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Read the next two together:

Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'Emergency'." -- Herbert Hoover

This is too good a crisis to waste. -- Rahm Emanuel

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Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Fredric Bastiat, French Economist (30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850)

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to another. -- François-Marie Arouet, a.k.a. Voltaire, (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778)

The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money. -- Margaret Thatcher

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. -- Winston Churchill

Friday, September 17, 2021

 #81: Misorsenokoithis/Homophobe — Tomayto/Tomaato?

September 14, 2010

Many people have commented on the political use of language to influence attitudes and to cover the realities of state misbehavior. Lenin, among others, was a master of the craft and his successors perfected the technique. Lesser known ones were Sukarno of Indonesia and Nasser of Egypt. The principle is simple: it doesn’t matter what the thing is, all that matters is what you call it.

We see this principle applied systematically by our relatively new grievance groups, the homosexuals and the Muslims. In both cases, there exist groups of people who object verbally to the demands of these groups, exercising their apparently guaranteed rights of free expression. The ones who object to the demands of homosexuals are immediately categorized by left-wing social “scientists” and “journalists” as “homophobes,” while the ones who object to Muslim misbehavior are dubbed “Islamophobes” by the same sources. More generally, those who dislike foreigners are called “xenophobes,” and so on.

It must be seen that these “technical” terms are not at all “scientifically neutral,” as their users attempt to pass them off as, but are actually terms that demean their targets. The particle “phobe” means “fear,” so the suggestion is that the objectors are objecting out of fear, since no other possible motivation is possible. The use the particle “fear” effectively assumes that the objector cannot have a legitimate ground for resisting, say, homosexual demands for marital rights.

The similar strategy is at work in the use of the new word “Islamophobe.” People who have issues with Muslims simply cannot have legitimate grounds for their attitudes, and therefore what they have to say can be dismissed without examination.

All of this is done by the mere use of a new “technical” term.

It wasn’t always this way.

There was a time when people could actually dislike a group without at the same time fearing it.

For example, people who hate Jews are even today called “anti-Semites.” Also, there was a time when men who disliked women were misogynists. Similarly, women who disliked men were called “misandrists.” Today, those same men would be called gynophobes.

Interestingly, the best that the brave new world can come up with for the female version is “man-haters,” there’s no move to introduce a new coinage of “androphobes.” I suspect that is just because our “social scientists” are 1) not literate enough to know that there is a perfectly good word already in existence, and 2) believe that there are really good reasons to hate men, and that “man-hate” is not just disguised man-fear, so a word like, say, androphobe is not necessary. Similarly, our progressive social “scientists” have not suggested that we start using a world like “semitophobe” in place of anti-Semite. The reason, again, is likely that they simply don’t believe that all anti-Jewish sentiment is based on a hidden fear – they actually think that most of it is legitimate real hostility.

The principle is simple enough. When the target population is one of the Left’s preferred victim groups, then all hostility towards that group is psychologized into being a sublimated secret fear and the phobia word is used. But when the target population is one that the Left itself hates, then no phobia word is coined and the hate/dislike word is retained.

Can you really imagine the New York Times or Time or Newsweek beginning to refer to Americaphobia in Europe or the Third World instead of Anti-Americanism?

Of course, the man called a gynophobe might meekly respond, “I don’t actually fear women, I just don’t like ‘em.” But such a man would be laughed down and ridiculed by our social-science educated politically current lemming population.  They have all learned from the post-Freudian pseudo-science of social psychology that all anger is nothing other than displaced fear (unless the anger is directed at men or Jews or White Americans).

There was a time when it was possible for a person to dislike people in general, and he was called a “misanthrope.” Today, it might be called “agoraphobia,” though there is some dispute as to what it actually entails.

The Greek root particle for dislike is “misos,” hence misogynist and misanthrope.

Following the left-wing social science disposition to coin new words, “neologisms,” I here propose a couple just for starters.

1)                          misorsenokoithis: “a dislike of homosexuals.” “Arsenokoith” is a Greek word with an honorable history, already to be found in the writings of St. Paul. It’s etymology is “arseno” (male) + “koithos” (sexual intercourse).

Now, don’t get me wrong, people who are actually afraid  of homosexuals should continue to refer to themselves as “homophobes.” But if they happen to just dislike them, then they should call themselves misorsenokoiths.

2)                         misoislamists: “a dislike of Muslims.” It is self-explanatory.

Whether you choose to add these neologisms to your vocabulary or not, the important thing is to become sensitive to the language used around you and its implications.

Do not go gently into that good night,

rage, rage against the dying of the word.

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