Hear 'Reform,' Think 'Destroy'

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012305K.shtml

 

Hear 'Reform,' Think 'Destroy'

By Susan Jacoby

The Los Angeles Times

 

Friday 21 January 2005

 

Bush warps the language in his effort to kill Social Security.

 

In a 1946 essay titled " Politics and the English Language, " George

Orwell observed that all political language is designed " to make lies

sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of

solidity to pure wind. "

 

As President Bush begins his second term, he has already

demonstrated the truth of Orwell's dictum by persuading much of the

windy news media to attach the word " reform " to his plan for

fundamental change in the way Social Security is financed. Each time

television or radio newscasters use the phrase " Social Security

reform, " as they do every day, they send a message to the American

public that Social Security is a broken system in need of fixing.

 

The general definition of reform is always positive, conveying the

notion of changes designed to improve an institution. In its specific

political sense, reform is offered as a moderate alternative to

radicalism and revolution. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, for

instance, has been judged by history as a set of reforms that saved

capitalism from its own worst excesses. Neither common nor political

usage justifies the application of the reform brand to such a

controversial proposal as the Republican plan to privatize Social

Security.

 

A minority of newspapers (the Los Angeles Times among them) appear

to have made a conscientious effort to keep the reform label out of

their headlines and use more neutral terms like " change " and

" revision. " But most of the media have capitulated to the

administration's understandable desire to soothe the public with the

R-word, thereby displaying as profound a bias as if the Bush plan were

routinely described as " Social Security destruction. "

 

" Reform " is a particularly loaded term because it has such a long

history of appropriation and exploitation by both religious and

political groups. Not for nothing do Protestants use the proper noun

Reformation to describe their 16th century break with the Roman

Catholic Church. But when I attended parochial schools in the 1950s,

priests and nuns talked only about schism and heresy.

 

To cite a more recent example, Bill Clinton was as successful as

Bush has been in his effort to dress a potential wolf - welfare reform

- in sheep's clothing. But Clinton was more candid than Bush in that

he promised to " end welfare as we know it. " He could make that

statement because welfare - unlike Social Security - elicits negative

responses from many middle-class Americans. A Bush promise to " end

Social Security as we know it " would scare so many voters that it

might have the unintended consequence of ending the Bush

administration as we know it.

 

The ubiquitousness of the phrase " Social Security reform " cannot

be attributed solely to conscious political strategy. The lazy,

tone-deaf relationship to the English language that pervades the

electronic media is far more influential - and far more destructive in

the long run to rational political discourse - than any political

machination. The broadcasters who parrot lines about Social Security

reform are the same people who are paid millions of dollars each year

to read senseless sentences like, " I could care less " - oblivious to

the fact that what they really mean is, " I couldn't care less. "

 

A culture that pays little heed to the precise meaning of words is

easy prey for those who distort words to suit their ideological

purposes. As Orwell noted, slovenly language is not merely the product

of foolish thoughts; it " makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. "

 

Susan Jacoby is the author of " Freethinkers: A History of American

Secularism " (Metropolitan Books, 2004) and director of the Center for

Inquiry-Metro New York.

 

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