The Newspeak of Freedom

We are all familiar with George Orwell's remarkably insightful focus in 1984 on how perversion of language controls thought and discourse. In Orwell's world the "Ministry of Truth" redefines freedom as slavery, war becomes peace and anyone who notes a discrepancy between reality and definition must be re-educated in Room 101. Unfortunately, we too often reassure ourselves with the lie that Newspeak is "just fiction" or simply a critique of Nazi and Stalinist propaganda. We don't like to believe that it is being practiced on us now, here in the United States of 2009.

The Orwellian perversions of language start with the titles of organizations. The Heritage Foundation is only interested in the heritage of fascism which it constantly promotes for the United States. The Manhattan Institute's name is meant to evoke the urgency of the World War II Manhattan Project when it's real focus is nuking American institutions, particularly free public education. The very term Conservative in politics has nothing to do with a conservation or deliberation that might have been recognizeable to Theodore Roosevelt, Everett Dirksen or even Barry Goldwater. It is an entirely different creature that is wholly owned by major corporate sponsors, a cadre of ultra-rich oligarchs and neo-fascist lunatics who have spent forty years attempting to destroy government with the deregulation and militant jingoism that has succeeded in destroying American power in the world and the world economy with it.

But there is a far more perverse and insidious use of Newspeak that seeks to murderously distort the very language of our human and civil rights for the purpose of destroying those very rights. I've noticed this for a long time but what has gotten me exercised at present is my listening to an alleged bastion of Liberal "bias". Recently a Seattle NPR affiliate spoke with a couple of practitioners of the current incarnation of Newspeak and largely let their perversions of language and ideas go unchallenged.

The first instance came in a discussion of same-sex marriage a Joseph Backholm of one of those Orwellian-named organizations, the Family Policy Institute, put forward the bald faced lie that legalizing same-sex marriage would infringe the "religious freedom" of "people of faith".

The first bit of nonsense in that assertion involves in defining "people of faith". By Mr. Backholm's construction same-sex couples are not and can never be "people of faith" and that no "person of faith" could believe that same-sex couples have the right to marry as do couples of mixed sexes. That implied assertion is nonsense on its face. He is actually saying that the people he represents, afflicted by a narrow, bigoted, shallow religiosity rather than anything resembling true religious feeling, oppose same-sex marriage. The fanatical people who fixate on a few select scriptural passages rather than a large overview of their religion's writings would be challenged by general availability and recognition of same-sex marriage.

In a sense Mr. Backholm is correct. The minority of religious fanatics who share his views will be offended by the general availability and recognition of same-sex marriage...just as Holocaust deniers are offended by the newsreel footage of the Nazi death camps. To which we should simply say, "Screw them!"

But the truly appalling bit of Newspeak in Mr. Backholm's specious argument is that legalizing and recognizing same-sex marriage is an assault on freedom of religion. I am tempted to assert that only the Prince of Lies could put forward a perversion of the concept of freedom - let alone religion - as extreme and horrible as that. In fact, what Mr. Backholm is asserting is that his narrow, bigoted religiosity is threatened with suppression by the free expression of a differing view of religion. I do not think that it is news to Mr. Backholm that his one, specious assertion of "freedom" should not, should never suppress the the freedom of others. In point of fact, Mr Backholm's argument amounts to an assertion that the practice of any religion at variance with the one he espouses should not be permitted. The whole point of creating the United States as a secular state in which religious freedom is guaranteed was to prevent fanatics and bigots such as Mr. Backholm from suppressing the religious expression of others.

But Mr. Backholm has no shame. He claims that a religious organization, for example, Catholic Charities, that refused to place children for adoption with same-sex couples would have its freedom of religion infringed. He asserts that this very thing has already happened in Massachusetts. But lets examine that a little closer.

Faced with potential discrimination complaints for refusing to place children with same-sex couples, the Archdiocese of Boston - the very organization where the scandals of church subornation of child abuse by priests originated - decided to withdraw from the state sponsored program and contracts under which it had placed adoptees for many years. Please note that it was the choice of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, not an order by the state. Massachustts correctly determined that placing a child with a stable, loving couple, regardless of the sexes of the members of that couple, was a boon to the child. Just as it had determined that refusing to place children with families based on race, religion or ethnicity was prohibited discrimination, Massachusetts rightly included sexual orientation in that list of prohibited discriminatory practices. Having done so, the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in Massachusetts, who had no visible moral compunctions or firm principles when it came to protecting a minority of abusive priests, suddenly grew a sense of morality and a set of unyielding principles and withdrew from the state sponsored, paid and contracted adoption system.

Note that Massachusetts officials expressed their regret at the withdrawal of Catholic Charities from the adoption system but no one tried to force Catholic Charities to place adoptees with same-sex couples. They simply shook their heads and waved goodbye. The Roman Catholic Church's freedom to practice its selective version of morality remains intact. The Archdiocese of Boston, if it is threatened at all, is under no threat except that of its own behavior in suborning child abuse. And, more to the point, a very questionable allocation of taxpayer funds to a religious organization has ended. No bands of torch-bearing same-sex couples have roamed through Boston burning Catholic Churches and Convents as the Protestant Know-Nothings did in the 1850s. Freedom of religion remains intact in Massachusetts and, happily, the separation of church and state so dear to the framers of the Constitution has been strengthened.

In a similar propagation of Newspeak the same radio station gave a forum to a con-artist from the ultra-rightist, labor-rights suppression group called the Evergreen "Freedom" Foundation. The subject was a bill, killed in this legislative session thanks to a stupid and ill-considered e-mail from a supporter, that would have given employees the right not to attend employer mandated meetings that have the purpose of expressing the employers views on politics, religion or union organizing. That doesn't seem so terrible, does it? Employers have held meetings in which they have implied that employees would lose their jobs if they did not vote the way the employer approved, joined a union or even did not accept the same religious dogma that the employer espouses. That seems like a clear violation of individual and civil rights.

But the Evergreen spokesperson Scott Dilley made the Orwellian assertion that this legislation to protect workers' freedoms is an infringement of the employer's freedom of speech. It's utter nonsense of course but for neo-fascist cultists like Scott Dilley it is an effective way of perverting the dialogue. What Mr. Dilley refuses to acknowledge is that we all have a freedom to speak or withhold our opinions and we have a concomitant freedom to listen or not. No one has to read this blog. In fact, were someone to attempt to force it on anyone, I would fight for that person's right to not read it. Not so Mr. Dilley.

What Mr. Dilley wants to sweep under the rug is the vast power gulf between employer and employee. A fanatic who owns a company can rant to his employees at will on any subject but employees exercise their freedom to ignore those rantings at the peril of their jobs. In an economy destroyed by the excesses of the very employers Mr. Dilley represents, no employee can take the whims of his or her employer lightly. In this era when workers need union protections more than at any time since the 1930s it is perfectly reasonable to rein in employers' excesses. But Mr. Dilley obfuscates by introducing the language of freedom and civil rights in service of enslavement to employers' whims.

Mr. Dilley's argument on behalf of employers is exactly the same as arguing that arresting and jailing a rapist or child molester is an infringement of his freedom of expression. It is an argument that deserves no credit and no unchallenged hearing. But George Orwell has been dead for over half a century and no one likes to think that a neo-fascist propaganda machine as effective and as vile as Josef Goebbels' is operating in 21st Century America.

After all, isn't Fox News "fair and balanced"?

[Note: In the many years I spent working in social services in the Boston Area I knew many Roman Catholic priests and nuns as well as Salvation Army officers and other people of faith whose religion was strong and broad and decent. All of whom were appalled at the minority of their fellows who abused their positions to abuse parishioners and even more so at the church structures that hid those abuses and allowed them to continue. The Archdiocese of Boston may have behaved appallingly but many individuals within it behaved responsibly, morally and in keeping with the expressed principles of their faith. It is their church heirarchy that has tarred them, not I.]

Nomenclature: And so was the turnpike from S'tockb-ridge to Bahstan

A word if I might about my name.

Bahstan is small republic in the distant east in which I spent many years. From 1990 through 2006 it was ruled by a succession of petty despots from an hereditary oligarchy most of whom came from neighboring republics. They obtained control through traitorous bargains that secured the collusion of an indigenous warlord of the region of Ma t'pan, T'omassa fin' Iran. At the beginning of 2007 democracy returned to Bahstan but the looting conducted during the 16 years of despotic rule have left the country poor and in serious difficulties when it comes to redressing the many grievances that the oligarchs have left behind.

In fact, the last Bahstan oligarch, the particularly slippery chameleon, M' tromnie bin Ute, is now attempting to take power in the wider region though the dangerous cult from which he draws his influence may drag him down more than support him. We can only hope. The popular credit of the party of the oligarchic plutocracy in the land is at historic lows because its outrageous excesses have brought that party into well deserved ill repute. That disgrace may protect the broader society from bin Ute and the horde of power-mad fellow despots and petty warlords vying with him for supremacy. We can take little comfort, however, in the fact that bin Ute is second to the even more odious Giul 'yani, former ruler of an especially violent and criminal police state.

In any case, you now have a primer on the origins of my name. I bear it proudly in the hope that the return of democracy can return Bahstan to its former glory that even the unintelligible local satrap, Me-nino, cannot dim.

Street Signs I: Some of the differences in getting around.

Boston is known for crazy traffic and crazy drivers but some of that is a function of the way that Boston particularly and Massachusetts more broadly deal with traffic controls. Famously Massachusetts is the state in which Stop signs and Red Lights are optional, so they say. No one who's driven there and survived will contradict that statement either.

I first moved to Massachusetts from Connecticut in June, 1978. Connecticut had had a "right turn on red" law for several years at that point. I moved to Lynn, Massachusetts and assumed that Massachusetts was similarly enlightened. From the behavior of my fellow drivers, I saw nothing to challenge my assumption. In fact, I might have been persuaded that Massachusetts had gone one better and instituted a "left turn on red law". However, in September, 1978 I read newspaper accounts of how Massachusetts needed to pass a "right turn on red" law or lose a lot of Federal Transportation Funds. The Great and General Court (i.e. Legislature) duly passed such a law so that the Commonwealth could receive its share of Federal Funds. But the story didn't end there.

You see, the primary reason that Massachusetts hadn't a "right turn on red" law was that the Registrar of Motor Vehicles was then a Reserve General, Richard E. McLaughlin. He insisted on being referred to as "General" in his civilian capacity and, as happens fairly often in Massachusetts and probably elsewhere, he'd built up a little fiefdom at the Registry along with some personal power and influence. The General did not like "right turn on red" laws. General McLaughlin was a "conservative" in the sense that term applies to the current Administration and the U.S. Republican Party which is to say, neo-fascist. He was not going to let so petty a thing as a law, even when backed by empirical evidence that the situation mandated in the law was a major improvement on the status quo in every measurable way, get in the way of something that he knew. Thus, having procured the additional Federal Transportation Funds, the General put a sizeable chunk of that money to use by making and posting at literally every intersection in Massachusetts signs that read, "NO TURN ON RED". Law and science were discarded for General McLaughlin's faith.

So what has that got to do with Bellingham? Specifically, nothing at all. In spirit though it has a great deal to do with my new home.

One of the reasons that driving in Massachusetts and especially in Boston is so dangerous is that, unless you know where you're going, you can't get there. Yes, I know that's sort of an old New England joke, but in the Boston area, it's literally true. Things may be changing in this day of On-Star and other GPS direction systems but I rather doubt it. You see, Massachusetts does not believe in street signs much. It is possible to drive for quite a way through Boston and its suburbs, to get quite far west, south or north and out of those suburbs altogether without seeing a street sign.

No, that's an exaggeration. You will see street signs that tell you over and over the name of the street you're on but if you're looking for an address on a side street with only street names to guide you, don't even leave you home. You can't get there from wherever your starting point may be. Vainly you will search for an indication of the name of the side street. There just isn't a sign and that despite long-standing legislation that such signs must be posted. Or, in the rare event that you should find a sign identifying the name of a side street, you may still be lost. I vividly remember standing at a bus stop on Blue Hill Avenue opposite Franklin Park and noticing the street sign for the side street next to my bus stop. The sign was 2-sided with the street name on black on a white background on each side. The street name was spelled differently on each side.

In Bellingham things are far more civilized. The streets, main and side, are clearly marked. The names appear on large, visible and legible signs placed for optimum notice by drivers. The street names are spelled correctly too. But this coast has its own insanities. In Bellingham it involves street names. Takes James Street for example. It leaves downtown Bellingham running roughly parallel to and just west of Interstate Route 5 until it intersects with Sunset Drive. At the intersection with James if you make a right onto Sunset you're heading toward the Sunset Shopping Centre. You cross over I-5 and if you turn left at the second light you are entering the shopping centre parking lot. But, if you make another left just before entering the parking area in front of the Round Table Pizza chain store you are now on a street parallel to Sunset driving back in the direction you just came from. You are also on James Street again. To be fair, James does curve to the right and resume being a north-south street on the west side of the shopping centre though on the east side of I-5 now, but the point is that the street is not contiguous at all.

As I've said before, Bellingham's official history isn't anywhere near as long as that of Boston or Salem, Massachusetts but it must have had someone at some point in its past who deserved to have a street named for him or her. Or perhaps there was a large farm in one family for generations that could have given its name to that northerly portion of James Street after the shopping centre.

I have some friends here in Bellingham whose official address is on East Maryland Street despite the fact that there is no East Maryland Street where they live and never has been. Even odder, the street onto which their driveway opens does not have a name. Even if it did, that name would not be East Maryland Street because were East Maryland Street to suddenly return from the parallel dimension in which it may currently exist, it would be on the opposite side of their house.

When the county Transportation Authority here tests prospective bus drivers it gives them a series of street addresses to find in a street map book. The trick question involves an address on a major street but on a section of that street that is separated from the main course of that street by 2 or 3 miles. On the whole, many streets here are not a lot easier to find than those on the Massachusetts less-than-magical mystery tour.

Or take Bellevue, Washington, an eastern suburb of Seattle. A friend of a friend lives there and we used to visit every few months in 2003-2004. He lives in a hillside subdivision. To get to a house there you might travel up Southeast 46th Street and turn onto Southeast 46th Street Way off of which is Southeast 46th Street Court which branches into Southeast 46th Street Court Way (and parallels Southeast 46th Street Court Drive) to get to Southeast 46th Street Court Lane. For a part of the country noted for invention and innovation those qualities are notably lacking in city planners.

On the other hand if some sane person in government were to legislate an end to such madness by requiring some logic to street names and names to change when the streets are not contiguous, there would undoubtedly be an initiative petition and a hue and cry over traditions and rights that could bring down governments because the attitude both here and in Massachusetts is that what we do may be insane but that's how we do it and we're damned well going to do it that way regardless of how little sense it makes.