The New Bigots

Much of our language today is borrowed from ancient Greece. For example, PHILOSOPHY means “love of wisdom”. PHILOS means “love” and SOPHIA means “reason”.

So...SOPHISTICATION means the “process or result of becoming cultured, knowledgeable, more complex, developed, or subtle”. Of course, we all would prefer to be seen as sophisticated. Its a highly regarded quality in today's culture.

One indicator of sophistication is the precise use of language. After all, language is an essential tool for conveying important ideas and values. Without precision we can not be confident our ideas are being correctly heard or understood. In fact, the improper use of language (knowingly, or unknowingly, redefine language in pursuit of personal selfish objectives) is THUGGERY. It is brutal and destructive to sophisticated society.

This is important. Please don't fade on me...America today is not very sophisticated. America is full of thugs.

A popular word today is BIGOT. In fact, a BIGOT is “a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people or ideas” A bigoted person “hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group”. Used precisely, BIGOT is an important word to express our disdain for destructive people...not unsavory ideas or behavior. Unfortunately, the term is most often used today to marginalize people and remove their views them from the marketplace of ideas. It seems the only bigots I know are the folks who call me a bigot. They are unable to debate ideas so they personally attack my character.

Or, TOLERANCE...the other favorite word of the Thug Class. “the willingness to accept feelings, habits, or beliefs that are different from your own”. But, of course, the only real tolerance demanded by thugs is the tolerance we extend to them.

The THUGS today fashion themselves to be arbiters of BIGOTRY while, at the same time,

professing to be models of tolerance. In both cases they have hijacked our language and co-opted our ability to communicate effectively in pursuit of sophistication. Since any attempt to remove distasteful ideas from public dialogue is the height of intolerance, the thugs declare the idea to be VILE. This is a new favorite word of the Thug Class. If an idea is declared VILE it cannot be tolerated. VILE is properly understood as “morally despicable or abhorrent; physically repulsive; disgustingly or utterly bad”. Unfortunately, for thugs, it simply means "something I don't like".

I'm not surprised that our ideas get lost in translation when we use language with such caprice. Phil Robinson (Duck Dynasty) is now the “bigot dujour” for the thugs and must be quarantined. Please understand that in a truly sophisticated society he is NOT a BIGOT. Nor, is he INTOLERANT. Neither are his ideas VILE. Mr. Robinson was asked his opinion of sin and offered it. Actually, not his personal view of sin...but his understanding of what his holy book declares is sin. It may have been distasteful to some, but it was not bigoted. Nothing in his statement implied a dislike for homosexuals. Nothing in his statement reflected a refusal to accept homosexuals.

One reason to call Mr. Robinson as BIGOT, rather than to simply declare his ideas distasteful, is to avoid having to explain or defend why we personally find them so distasteful. It allows us to claim in a dispassionate way that society has declared them to be so.  It is neither tolerant nor sophisticated. It merely reveals the users inability to argue the merits.

Which all reminds me of another word...HYPOCRITE...“a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs”.