Shownotes Transcript
In this episode of Life Matters, Commissioner Johnston outlines the incredible power that language has over our thoughts and perceptions.
Brian had studied Comparative Linguistics at Sonoma State University and explains a language phenomenon that many of us don’t often think about. Just as we are unable to comprehend a completely foreign language, there is the related inability to think about or understand ideas for which we have no words.
This principle also extends to deeper implications - that the meaning of words themselves can be changed simply by their usage in society. Those who control the tools of communication - major media and academic circles, are given great control over the use of language. They often create new rules and usages.
George Orwell eloquently illustrated the phenomenon in his book 1984. He had written an epilogue explaining how language is used to control the populace in collectivist-socialist cultures. Orwell’s epilogue is widely available and very recommended. It is entitled, “The Principles of Newspeak”.
Newspeak is the method by which ‘Ingsoc’, ideas of the new English socialism, would be imparted and reinforced. It resulted in the inability to think of individual freedom or previous forms of government. The meanings attached to those concepts would simply be lost.
Brian further comments on the details of this phenomenon as illustrated in Comparative Linguistics.
The language principle is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Brian had studied the comparative dialects of the Pomo Indian Tribe of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino Counties. Many years earlier, Edvard Sapir had studied the languages of the Aleut and Inuit tribes (formally called Eskimos). Benjamin Lee Whorf studied the Hopi Indian dialects. Each made observations regarding vocabulary (Sapir) and verb tense (Whorf). They concurred that the different aspects of language directly impacted how the language-user viewed the world around them.
Brian explains how the right to life, abortion and euthanasia debates are directly impacted and even determined, by the language that is used.
Obviously, abortion advocates have intentionally changed the vocabulary (choice - a concept - is used to replace the specific action of dismemberment and disposal of the human child). And this is but one example. But in a larger sense, the use of the language and the presumptions that language carries, have also quietly induced pro-life individuals to engage in the debate of ideas, but only using the premises that our current culture has made popular.
Many pro-lifers feel a deep need to debate the relative merits and arguments of the Roe v. Wade decision. But as Brian, pro-life judges, and even pro-abortion judges, have pointed out, Roe versus Wade is completely illogical in its premises, in its pattern of logic, and in its conclusions.
Again, even Justice Ginsburg, the most-radical pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice has declared that Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, have not granted women a right to choose or the right to do what they wish with their bodies. Justice Blackmun was explicit that Roe does not create an unlimited right to an abortion. Yet abortion for ‘choice’ is still considered its result.
Brian‘s point is that it is the companion decision, Doe versus Bolton, which explicitly sets aside the rambling confusion regarding pregnancy and culture and history (the actual content of Roe). It is Doe versus Bolton that explicitly allows doctors to kill, based solely on their own personal opinion, and without any further accountability.
Doe is the enactment ‘provision’ of Roe v. Wade. And by making the physician (not the woman) the designated agent and ultimate decision maker, it has brought a direct attack against the very premise of the culture in which we live, Western Civilization.
Western Civilization holds the premise that human beings are more than merely animals. One profession was dedicated to always caring for and protecting the unique and vulnerable human person - the medical profession. Throughout Western Civilization doctors have always sworn to never harm or kill.
It is in Doe v. Bolton that the medical profession is explicitly empowered to kill and directed to do so at their own discretion.
Western Civilization a victim in the Roe and Doe companion decisions - they have done even more than simply authorize the killing of innocent babies. An unrestrained killing profession has now become an accepted part of our society.
But language has prevented many from seeing or even thinking about what that means.