Rhetoric for a Land of the Freer
To speak in the word choices of the major parties is defeatist. A liberty-talk think tank is needed to isolate and dispose of big government catchwords, and to identify and create good small government catchwords for our usage. Some guidelines, a model and examples are proposed to spark discussion on “framing” pro-liberty.
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Posted October 18, 2006
The word “rhetoric” is not necessarily bad. The first definition the Oxford English Dictionary gives for “rhetoric” is “the art of effective and persuasive speaking or writing.” That's good indeed!
We libertarians are lacking a rhetoric of our own.
Most libertarians unconsciously speak in the preferred wordings of the major parties. Though both big tent parties may overlap into the small government quadrant slightly, little of their rhetoric is designed to shrink government. Neither holds a minarchic worldview, therefore neither Democrat rhetoric nor Republican rhetoric nor a mix of the two will suffice to persuasively argue for small government.
Libertarians need to consciously and collectively choose words to advance a Libertarian rhetoric. In this way we can distinguish ourselves by our words and give lib-leaners ways to speak lib, think lib, and identify with a libertarian cause.
Rhetoric popularizes a worldview. A uniquely libertarian rhetoric is essential for propping up a big tent for libery.
I'm saying it's high time we get “framing” (so dubbed by sociologist Erving Goffman and applied to politics much of late by cognitive linguist George Lakoff) such that pro-minarchic choices of words “frame” for ourselves a minarchic view of the world.
This framing is in all sorts of renaming of things, and in selective omission. Just as “tsunami” does not come off the lips of a Phuket hotel manager, and the head of the Fed is incapable of saying “purchasing power,” it's unbecoming of freedom-lovers to utter such words as “gay marriage” or “same-sex marriage,” “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” “War on Drugs,” “affirmative action,” “intelligent design,” “defense budget”.....
The idea is that some words are loaded. Their mere utterance aligns you with them. Loaded words block out certain ways of thinking and frame in a certain worldview. To use them is to ascribe to them.
It's not that rhetoric is merely a stringing up of loaded words, but throw in a few loaded words and your rhetoric is amplified . . . or squelched. Loaded words are swell so long as they're well-chosen.
I propose these guidelines for dumping anti-liberty terms and for chosing lib-loaded ones:
- use only the current ones that are for small government:
'nanny state', 'corporate welfare', 'death tax'
- where there's no consensus among Libs, use neutral (anti-/pro-) words:
'pro-life' ~ 'anti-abortion', 'pro-choice' ~ 'pro-abortion'
- if no special word is needed, use no special word:
'gay marriage'/'same-sex marriage' ~ 'marriage', 'War on Drugs' ~ 'drug prohibition'
- no euphemisms:
'affirmative action' ~ 'preferential treatment', 'intelligent design' ~ 'creationism', 'the war in Iraq' ~ 'Iraq War', 'African-American' ~ 'black', 'gender' ~ 'sex'
- for new ones, keep it short (one to four syllables preferred):
'assault weapons ban' ~ 'gun choice(s)', 'defense budget' ~ 'war spending'
As for the motivation behind my list of guidelines, one might consider that other parties have coherent rhetorical underpinnings. Or so some say. Lakoff says, roughly put, that within the head of the average person there's a political metaphor, a “model,” so fundamental it's subconscious. With that model your rhetoric must jibe. If not, your rhetoric will soon form for you its model.
Lakoff has it that the Republican metaphor is the “strict father model.” Good government is the strict father providing moral guidance to his children, the citizens. The Democrat metaphor is the “nurturant parent model.” Good government is parent/guardian protecting their essentially good children, the citizens, from corrupting influences.
Cognitive linguists will agree that to use terms based on a metaphor is to support that metaphor, know it or not. Therefore, it's self-defeating to speak in the metaphor-terms of somebody else's party. It's better to be mindful of the metaphor deep down in your mind.
If all this metaphor-model-frame talk is to be believed, both major parties hold the metaphor of family, just with different emphasis. Either way we are all children 'neath a parently government.
So, what's the libertarian model? We're not picturing some parent-government raising child-citizens, that's for sure.
A Model We can Call our Own
Right. What is it then? As I see it, the picture deep in the minds of libs is one of a party! A wingding! A lu'au! We're fighting for our right to it! It's fun for the whole family and the government should only intervene when festivities are getting interfered with. Perhaps that's just the picture deep in my mind. The point is we need a regular think tank to sort this stuff out, build on it, and see how she flies. That think tank should arrive at more or better guidelines and catchphrases than mine.
That think tank may arrive at a truer model than mine too. Perhaps amusement park-like visions of cops in clownsuits roving around with high-powered suction gizmos for a quick clean up in case somebody vomits on the dance floor may not be a widely held picture of proper government even among minarchists. But then again...
Job for a Think Tank
Guideline #1 asks the think tank to make a full and selective list of current loaded words that jibe with liberty.
Guideline #2 has it that catchword rhetoric should not be made of what divides us.
With “anti-/pro-abortion” you can talk about it as a cold-button issue without taking sides, plus good words can be freed up. After all, should all life and all choice be encapsulated in this, an issue relatively insignificant for most libertarians? Even for those of us who feel strongly one way or the other on abortion, it would be far better to free up the words “life” and “choice” for a variety of uses.
Guideline #3 tells us that it's quality, not quantity, we want. Where no loaded words are needed there should be none.
Attaching such words as “gay” or “same-sex” to marriage incorrectly places emphasis on sex. Millions have proven that sex does not necessarily have to do with marriage. The government need not intervene just because there's a wedding at our picnic. You can't tell by looking who's bride and who's groom? Life's a masquerade!
It is also gainful to use terms that are unadorned, yet have strong associations, like “prohibition,” which calls to mind the failed illegalization of alcohol.
In guideline #4 I say no euphemisms, and I'm dead serious on this. It's up to the freedom-lovers of this nation to quell that hideous ogre, Political Correctness, that first reared its ugly head some thirty years ago, and lurks even amongst us, laughing in our faces with gleeful scorn.
The political arena is littered with couth rewordings and elaborate avoidances. Some are even short and simple and have been passed around so long we forget they're euphemisms. A good think tank could fill a dumptruck with them.
Generations ago, my ancestors came across on different boats from different parts of Europe. Does that make me European-American? It so happens I'm white, though some blacks came across from Europe in olden days too. The atrocious reality-twisting euphemism “African-American” shows us that the roots of Political Correctness run deep. Already in ancient times in the Americas, among the reds there were some blacks and whites. All those descendants of early inhabitants of the Americas lost the designation “Americans” in the aftermath of the War of 1812.
For a more recent pre-P.C. era example, take “defense.” Both major parties avoid the word “war.” The Secretary of War was the Secretary of War even in peacetime, but since 1947 we speak of the Secretary of Defense even in wartime. A Department of Defense that attacks a country just because is truly a D o' W. Oh, the savings we would save if we would pay for only defense spending and not for war spending! Until defense means defense, let's call war “war.”
In the words of Thomas Paine, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
In guideline #5 I suggest we could use a few more catchy ones of our own, fully loaded to our purposes.
I believe “grandchild tax” is a going example of a fresh lib-catchphrase. I don't know who thought it up, but it's a beaut!
“Common sense” has been proposed as a worthy libertarian watchword. It aptly alludes to the 1776 best-seller of that name, and it sure beats the vapid “moral values” cherished by the major parties.
”Spending,” like in ”war spending,” could be a productive negativizer. “Deficit” lacks punch, so for brevite “debt spending” might work.
The bumper sticker slogan “We're pro-choice on everything” gets me thinking, by letting the word “choice” take on a life of its own, it could be a productive positivizer. Besides turning around the likes of “assault weapons ban” with “gun choices,” the sterilized “sexual orientation” could be better expressed with “sex choice.” Rather than “pharmaceutical regulations,” we must have our “drug choices.” These terms respectively carry the positive charge of the dearly held Second Amendment, “government out of the bedroom,” and “you know what's best for you.”
We might do well to reconsider our own name. “Libertarian” sounds stuffy and it's about one syllable too long. Perhaps the right drawl solves it. “lib-uh-TEHR-yin.”
George Orwell wrote that “political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” It will take historical perspective, a space traveler's-eye view, and hammerhead bluntness to prove that it need not be this way. Stronger ways to make a case for liberty are to be found if we know better than to just go around talking like tax-n-spenders and hock-n-spenders. 7 Comments
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