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Liberalism and the hollowing out of language
The blogger Glaivester writes:
I thought you might like this recent post from my blog, where I critique this line from Bush’s state of the union,I read your article. The trouble is, Shylock makes his case before a judge who rules against him in the matter of Antonio and punishes him rather severely, so I’m not sure that The Merchant of Venice is an appropriate illustration of your point. But let’s return to Bush’s quote with which you begin, “The leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace.” This is the bizarrely out-of-touch-with-reality language used by modern Western leaders when dealing with non-Westerners and enemies. So-and-so “must” do something. And if he doesn’t? Uh, well, uh, we’ll accept that too. So the “must” is a palpable fraud, by which the leader pretends that he is being firm, when in fact he is being an appeaser. Living in a political society where leaders constantly speak language that doesn’t connect with reality is a kind of hell. But it is the inevitable result of liberalism. Why? Given the nature of the world, nations must occasionally confront evil and enemies. But liberalism says that to exert power over others is to be discriminatory and unequal. Liberalism thus removes the moral and rational basis of leadership and power. Yet leadership and power—or at least their appearance—are still essential to the workings and the legitimacy of political society. The result is the adoption by liberal leaders of a kind of anti-language, words that don’t mean anything, but pretend to mean something.
To repeat, liberalism prohibits the recognition of certain dimensions of reality, such as the existence of unregenerate evil and unappeasable enemies. But evil and enemies keep cropping up, and the leader must at least go through the motions of responding to them. Therefore, the leader of liberal society must use false language, he must operate in bad faith. He is a hollow man, a stuffed man. He speaks of confrontation, resolve, and implied punishment. He declares, “They must do such and such,” a declaration not backed up by any conquential act or by any intention to engage in any consequential act (“Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow”), until finally the enemy, finding nothing solid standing in his way, simply takes over, and the temporizing language of liberalism is spoken no more, because liberal society has come to an end. Email entry |