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Raping the Language

By Selwyn Duke

Although the creation of the film Idiocracy evidences how we’re already halfway to an idiocracy — the work reflects decadent modern culture — it’s a good comedic warning about where we’re headed. For those too unsophisticated to imbibe such Hollywood fare, know that the movie presents a dystopian future America dumbed-down to a preposterous degree. One thing portrayed in the film is the degradation of language, with, for instance, a doctor character starting an interrogative with “why come” instead of “how come.” And it is a perfect example of art imitating life.

Many today will rape the English language, taking pleasure in mangling and tangling it, confusing corruption with creativity. What follows are examples of such, starting with the relatively innocuous and concluding with the more dangerous.

While journalists are supposed to be word men (those were the days, huh?), they often lead the charge toward idiocracy. It’s not just the news piece I read a few years back penned in pidgin English — obviously by someone to whom English isn’t his first language — but those who try to be “cute.” For example, Golf Channel’s Tim Rosaforte recently mentioned something that had been revealed and began his sentence with, “The big reveal is....” But unless he was about to apprise the audience of a large window jamb’s existence, “reveal” is a verb, not a noun. The word you’re looking for, Tim, old boy, is “revelation.” Likewise, let’s dispense with the new and budding practice of writing things such as “The tells are there,” which seems to have originated in the poker world. For unless we're talking about a raised mound at a Middle Eastern archeological site, “tell” is a verb, not a noun. If one wants to “tell” someone about a thing serving as a clue, the relevant term is “indication.”

Read the rest here.

Unmasking the Grim Reaper’s Foot Soldiers

By Selwyn Duke

One day back in high school, a very interesting English teacher asked our class a moral question: if you could press a button and get a million dollars, but a little old man — with no family, friends, or ties of any kind — in the backwoods of China would die, would you push that button?

Approximately a third of the class raised their hands in the affirmative.

This story always comes to mind when I ponder the abortion question. The old line of the pro-abortion lobby was that they wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare,” implying it’s some sort of necessary evil. Their reasoning always was, “Well, we don’t know when human life begins, so whether or not to end a pregnancy should be the woman’s choice.” Of course, this position was never morally or philosophically sound. After all, if what lies within the womb is just an “unviable tissue mass,” why worry about abortion being “rare”? Oh, yes, the pro-aborts aren’t sure about the intrauterine being’s status. All right, then what they’re essentially saying is that they’ll err on the side of recklessness. It may be murder, you know — so we’ll just do it a little bit.

The Most Interesting Career: Housewife

By Selwyn Duke

On the heels of my recent article on women in combat, in which I defend traditionalism, it’s perhaps a good time to also take up the cudgels for that bugaboo of women’s studies classes: the housewife. Thus do I provide you with the quotation below from G.K. Chesterton’s book What’s Wrong with the World. He wrote:

Women in Combat: Battling Nature, Battering Reality

By Selwyn Duke

Senseless advice and nothing nice; that’s what little-girls-in-combat policy is made of.

The obvious has already been said about placing women in front-line combat positions. Their presence will reduce unit cohesiveness; male soldiers’ natural instinct to protect women will influence battlefield decisions; there will be the problem of sexual impropriety within the ranks and of rape when women are captured; women will have more trouble measuring up to the physical and psychological demands of battle; special accommodations will no doubt be made so that women may tend to feminine concerns; and, as the high pregnancy rate aboard naval vessels has proven, having young men and women operate in close quarters is folly. Yet the truth is that it was just a matter of time before women were allowed in combat; it’s a piece that fits seamlessly into the modern sex-role puzzle. And it’s not surprising if a majority of Americans support the policy; they are sex-role puzzled.

Six-year-old Suspended for Firing Assault Finger

By Selwyn Duke

If you want to know why we’re breeding some crazy youngsters nowadays, you only have to look at the adults surrounding them. A case in point is a Maryland elementary school that recently suspended a little child for using an assault finger. Writes The Examiner of Washington:

The 6-year-old, who attends Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Silver Spring, made a gun with his hands, pointed it at another student and said "pow," according to Robin Ficker, the boy's attorney. He was given a one-day suspension, with a conference on the matter planned for Jan. 2….

Wow.

He said “pow.”

And I bet it really was “POW!”

Losing the Future: The Fiscal-conservative Fantasy

By Selwyn Duke

With the loss of the 2012 election, there is much talk of how the Republican Party must do some soul searching. How will the GOP wage successful campaigns when demographic and cultural changes favor the opposition? Increasingly, the answer is that the party’s party is over, that it must move into the future or be relegated to the past. “Dispense with the social issues!” we’re counseled. “Don’t trouble over abortion or faux marriage and instead just focus on fiscal matters.”

Barack Obama: Anatomy of an Ideologue

By Selwyn Duke

As with G.W. Bush before him, much time is spent arguing about Barack Obama’s character. Does he mean well and just not govern well, or is it something else? What can be missed during this debate, however, is that most damage is done in the name of doing good.

Consider, for instance, a Muslim parent teaching his child to engage in violent jihad. Like any parent, he almost surely wants his child healthy and successful. Like any wise parent, though, he also may believe that if he had to choose between his child being healthy and successful, and being good, he’d have to choose goodness. After all, what does it profit a man to gain the world but to lose his soul? Only, he defines “good” differently than you do.

Similarly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a leader who expressed willingness to sacrifice half Iran’s population to wipe Israel off the map. Does this mean he doesn’t care if his nation is healthy and successful? More likely, he considers those priorities secondary to what is good, which he defines much, much differently than you do.

Read the rest here.

When Feminists Criminalize “Sexist” Speech

By Selwyn Duke

If you want to know what Barack Obama and his fellow travelers have planned for us, you need look only at what their cutting-edge cousins have already implemented overseas. For example, hate-speech laws have long been used in Europe and other parts of the “Western” world to punish people for criticizing Islam and homosexuality. Now feminists are tightening the noose on freedom further with laws prohibiting “sexist” speech. Writes Phyllis Schlafly at The Moral Liberal:

Why Accept Contraception as a Women’s Issue?

By Selwyn Duke

While many points have been made about this campaign’s contraception controversy, there’s one that I haven’t yet heard anyone mention.

Why do we accept contraception as a women’s issue?

If 51 Percent of the Congress Were Women…

By Selwyn Duke

While watching television Friday evening, I was shocked to see my state’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, in a campaign ad. After all, this is New York and she’s a Democrat, which translates into anonymity for her opponent and her enjoyment of about an 87 point lead in the polls (okay, I lied; it’s only 43), and air time in NY’s market is pricey. Perhaps, I thought, she just wanted a tax write-off or vanity compelled her to put her face on TV. Then again, maybe she just wanted to see how many elements of propaganda could fit into a 30-second political spot.

It’s not that she opens the ad describing herself as “one of the only young mothers serving in the Senate” (Gillibrand is 45 and had her first child at 36); hey, she looks good and pulls it off. It’s that her little spot, titled “Standing Up for Women,” is, like her, style over substance. And what really struck me was her closing line: “Because if 51 percent of the Congress were women, we wouldn’t be debating contraception; we’d be debating jobs and the economy.”

First, if 100 percent those who governed were women such as her opponent, Wendy Long, we wouldn’t be discussing contraception because the phony diversionary issue wouldn’t have been manufactured in the first place and Uncle Scam wouldn’t be forcing us to pay for others’ birth control. So let’s be honest, Kirstie, what you really mean to say is, “If 51 percent of Congress were women like me.”

But then there’s something about this contraception matter that, as far as I’ve seen, hasn’t been mentioned.

Read the rest here.