The Passionate God Who Confronts the Wicked Final Version

8/9/2019 The Passionate God Who Confronts the Wicked Final Version

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The Passionate God Who Confronts The Wicked 1

The Passionate God Who Confronts The Wicked

Eduard C. Hanganu

B.A., M.A., LinguisticsLecturer in English, UE

Draft 40

Revised – December 21, 2014

© 2014


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 4

II. The Attack on the Freedom of Speech ..................................................................................... 6

Freedom of Speech – A Divine Right ................................................................................ 6

Orwell’s Phantom – The “Newspeak” ............................................................................... 6

Political Correctness – The “Nextspeak” .......................................................................... 8

PC Application to World Literature ................................................................................ 13

Invective in Literature and Science ................................................................................. 17

Some Scientists Like “Uncivil” Humor .......................................................................... 22

III. Political Correctness and the Bible ....................................................................................... 24

Offensive Dogmas and Uncivil Words ........................................................................... 24

All Male Pronouns Must Be Removed ........................................................................... 24

Offensive Biblical Doctrines Removed ........................................................................... 26

Good for All The Rainbow Colors .................................................................................. 26

The Inoffensive and Impotent Bible ............................................................................... 27

IV. The Bizarre Jesus Who Never Was ...................................................................................... 29

The False Image of the Divine Man ............................................................................... 29

The Jesus Who Commands Respect ............................................................................... 31

The Jesus Who Confronts The Sinners ........................................................................... 31

The Jesus Who Confronts The Leaders .......................................................................... 32

The Jesus Who Indicts False Teachers ........................................................................... 34

The Ruthless and Intolerant God-Man ............................................................................ 35

Did Not Tolerate Sin ........................................................................................... 36Confronted The Impenitent ................................................................................. 37

Excluded The Rebellious .................................................................................... 37

V. The Passionate and Ruthless God .......................................................................................... 38

The God Who Is Passionate ............................................................................................ 38


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The God Who Is Harsh ................................................................................................... 38

The God Who Is Ruthless ............................................................................................... 39

The God Who Is Intolerant ............................................................................................. 42

The God Who Is Judgmental .......................................................................................... 43

The God Who Hates Sin ................................................................................................. 44

The God Who Hates Sinners ........................................................................................... 44

The God Who Confronts ................................................................................................. 45

The God Who Is Vengeful .............................................................................................. 46

VI. Compelled To Confront and Warn ....................................................................................... 48

Political Correctness and the Church .............................................................................. 48

False Doctrines And Their Diagnosis ............................................................................. 50

Characteristics of False Shepherds ................................................................................. 51

A Distorted Theological Perspective .............................................................................. 52

How John And Jesus Defended Truth ............................................................................ 52

Our Sacred Obligation as Believers ................................................................................ 53

Biblical Judgment ............................................................................................... 53

Expose False Teachers ........................................................................................ 54

Expose Error ....................................................................................................... 55

Name False Teachers .......................................................................................... 56A Soft Nudge Is Not Good Enough ................................................................................ 58

The Courage To Criticize And Rebuke .......................................................................... 59

Christian Writers Who Were Uncivil ............................................................................. 60

Political Correctness Fights Literature ............................................................................ 60

Rhetorical Language That Fits Purpose .......................................................................... 60

VII. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 62

References ................................................................................................................................... 64


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I. Introduction

After he had read the research document, “Antiochus IV and Daniel’s Little HornReexamined,” and had noticed the critical language I had used about the blatant lies and brazendeceptions that have been circulated for almost two centuries in the Seventh-day Adventist

[further, SDA] theological circles, and about the ignorant, inept, and dishonest theologians whohad disseminated those “truths,” David Jarnes, alleged “senior book editor ” for the SDA PacificPress Publishing Association [further, PPPA], dismissed all the indisputable evidence that I had presented in the document as unreliable for two reasons that from his “expert” editorial perspective negated all the factual scientific evidence that I had presented. His first contentionwas that “the tone of [my] work makes it clear that it is not a dispassionate search for truth,” andthe second reason was that “[n]ame-calling – ‘ bigoted SDA Pseudo-Historicists,’ ‘TruthFabricators,’ ‘Falsehood Wholesalers,’ etc. – immediately reveals that something other than asearch for truth has driven the writing of the paper presented,”1 because, he affirmed, “no paperis either well-written or scholarly when it directs ‘snarl words’ at those who disagree with theauthor.”

2

The issue, though, was not one of personal and private disagreement aboutinconsequential issues with the SDA scholars who had disseminated serious theological errorsand fabrications among the SDA church members. It was one of flagrant and scandalous lies and positive deceptions that the SDA theologians and scholars had peddled among the SDA churchmembers for decades as “present truth.” The Bible teaches that such flagrant lies and brazendeceptions, and those who circulate them must be denounced and confronted in a language thatleaves no doubt about the author's intention to expose those falsehoods and warn the churchmembers against the false “teachers of the law” and “shepherds” who mislead their flocks.

This argument paper is a response to the criticism that Jarnes has raised against the“uncivil” language and content of the research document, “Antiochus IV and Daniel’s LittleHorn Reexamined,” and therefore against the entire document – in actual point, a rebuttal to histwo undocumented claims: (1) that a passionate “tone” in a research work undermines thedocument and cancels its scientific worth because such language “makes it clear that [thedocument] is not a dispassionate [or impartial] search for truth,” and also that (2) “[n]ame-calling[such as] ‘ bigoted SDA Pseudo-Historicists,’ ‘Truth Fabricators,’ ‘Falsehood Wholesalers,’ etc. – immediately reveals that something other than a search for truth has driven the writing of the paper presented,”

because “no paper is either well-written or scholarly when it directs ‘snarl

words’ at those who disagree with the author.”

The counterarguments I will present in this response are that (1) freedom of expressionand “tone” is a universal and inalienable human right, that (2) the “dispassionate” or “neutral”

language is restrictive, unnatural, and false, that (3) both belletristic and scientific universalworks are replete with “unconventional,” “incorrect,” harsh, rude, offensive, and even vulgarlanguage, and that (4) the “dispassionate” and “neutral” theological language that Jarnesembraces is unbiblical because the Bible — both the Old Testament [further, OT] and the NewTestament [further, NT] — contain inspired language that is often passionate, harsh, rude, andintolerant to the wicked. The “humble” and “meek ” or rather weak, feeble, and emasculatedChrist who is the main actor in most children’s stories and theological accounts is a fictionalcharacter with no biblical base – the distorted and false image of an awesome man-God who


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exposes sin, offends sinners, denounces wickedness, and also confronts and threatens with deaththe unrepentant and rebellious sinners and deems the wicked to eternal destruction.

This document also argues that to expose intentional and even unintentional theologicalerrors and deceptions, confront those theologians and “shepherds” who disseminate such

atrocities in harsh and even offensive language, and warn the church members against thosetheologians and their fraudulent teachings is not an “uncivil,” bad-mannered, insolent, andgratuitous act, but a sacred Christian obligation that Christ exemplified in his righteous and blameless human life and then delegated through his words and the NT biblical texts to the futuregenerations of Christians until the end of time as an integral and indispensable part of the proclamation of the Gospel – the good and marvelous news of salvation and eternal life to therepentant sinner, but at the same time the bad and dreadful news of eternal destruction to theobstinate and wicked sinner.


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II. The Attack on the Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Speech – A Divine Right

God created man free. The first thirteen American colonies recognized and affirmed this

biblical fact at first on July 4, 1776 in their “Declaration of Independence” that proclaimed thefirst thirteen colonies free from the British despotic and oppressive domination and establishedthem as independent states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by theirCreator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.1

That among those “unalienable Rights” the new American nation’s leaders considered thefreedom of speech becomes obvious in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the UnitedStates Constitution, that were ratified in 1791. These first amendments were intended to limit thegovernment’s power and provided needed protection against probable and possible governmentabuse. States the First Amendment:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to

petition the government for a redress of grievances.2

The United Nations adopted and expanded the human rights stipulated in the UnitedStates Bill of Rights at a General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 through theresolution 217 A (III):

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinionswithout interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media andregardless of frontiers.3

Humans have the Divine right or freedom to hold opinions, to decide through what meanssuch opinions should be expressed, and to do so “without interference.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also takes for granted the human freedom to “seek, receive andimpart information and ideas,” in open, unmonitored, and unrestricted communication with otherhuman beings.

Orwell’s Phantom – The “ Newspeak ”

Along the human history, though, various individuals or groups have arrogated thelicense to abridge, restrict, or even interdict this God-given freedom of speech or expression andto harass and punish those who have taken it for granted that these fundamental rights wereintrinsic to humans and inalienable. Control over, limitation, restriction, or interdiction of thefreedom of speech or expression are characteristic to the totalitarian and despotic societies, andindicate a paranoid and morbid obsession with power and control from individuals or groups thathave placed themselves above all the other humans through seized control, although such abuse

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is most often hidden behind the fallacious “common good” slogan or other similar logical andmoral perversions.

Orwell describes a horrendous totalitarian “Utopia” in his famous book, 1984.4 Althoughwritten as a political fiction, the book, a realistic parable, describes possible, potential, and even

real repressive societies under which people lived at the time he wrote the book and live evennow. Among the innumerable controls, limitations, and restrictions enforced on the men andwomen in Orwell’s narrative and pounded into those people with irrational and absurd sloganssuch as “war is peace,” “freedom is slavery,” and “ignorance is strength,”5 the human languagemanipulation is introduced as “ Newspeak,”6 and detailed in chapters four and five and also in the book’s appendix. A pertinent and relevant “Newspeak” agenda statement included in theaddendum follows below:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mentalhabits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intendedthat when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought – thatis, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least so far asthought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtleexpression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all othermeanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by theinvention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words asremained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in suchstatements as “This dog is free from lice,” or “This field is free from weeds.” It could not be used in its old

sense of “politically free” or “intellectually free,” since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed

even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitelyheretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could bedispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range ofthought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.7

The “Newspeak” language reform was intended to be extensive and irreversible, and thefinal and permanent product was calculated to reinvent the past and create a surreal present andgrotesque future. States Orwell:

When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed.History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there,imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one’s knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read

them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible anduntranslatable. It was impossible to translate any passage of Oldspeak into Newspeak unless it eitherreferred to some technical process or some very simple everyday action, or was already orthodox ( good-thinkful would be the Newspeak expression) in tendency. In practice this meant that no book written beforeapproximately 1960 could be translated as a whole. Prerevolutionary literature could only be subjected toideological translation – that is, alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known

passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their

Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That

to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of

the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of

the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original.The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word


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crimethink . A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would bechanged into a panegyric on absolute government.8

These radical changes would affect publications such as periodicals and also belletristicand scientific works that have encapsulated for millennia priceless human knowledge andwisdom – unique, exceptional, and irreplaceable productions of the human mind. Such workswould be altered as follows:

A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerationsof prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures, while at the same time

bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of Ingsoc. Various writers, such as Shakespeare,Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens and some others were therefore in process of translation; when the task had

been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the literature of the past, would bedestroyed. These translations were a slow and difficult business, and it was not expected that they would befinished before the first or second decade of the twenty-first century. There were also large quantities ofmerely utilitarian literature – indispensable technical manuals and the like – that had to be treated in thesame way. It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the finaladoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.9

Political Correctness – The “ Nexts peak”

Orwell’s novel sounded almost too ridiculous to be acceptable even as fiction when the book was published for the first time in 1950, but the past decades have provided ample evidencethat such unthinkable totalitarian and dictatorial “language reforms” are possible even in theclaimed democratic societies, have occured in the past, and are implemented now in the UnitedStates – “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” The force behind such incredible phenomena is the Political Correctness [further, PC] Police. Encyclopaedia Britannica has thefollowing information on this “reconstructive” socio-political device:

Political Correctness (PC), term used to refer to language that seems intended to give the least amount ofoffense, especially when describing groups identified by external markers such as race, gender, culture, or

sexual orientation. The concept has been discussed, disputed, criticized, and satirized by commentatorsfrom across the political spectrum. The term has often been used derisively to ridicule the notion thataltering language usage can change the public’s perceptions and beliefs as well as influence outcomes.

The term first appeared in Marxist-Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At thattime it was used to describe adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the SovietUnion (that is, the party line). During the late 1970s and early 1980s the term began to be used wittily byliberal politicians to refer to the extremism of some left-wing issues, particularly regarding what was

perceived as an emphasis on rhetoric over content. In the early 1990s the term was used by conservatives toquestion and oppose what they perceived as the rise of liberal left-wing curriculum and teaching methodson university and college campuses in the United States. By the late 1990s the usage of the term had againdecreased, and it was most frequently employed by comedians and others to lampoon political language. Attimes it was also used by the left to scoff at conservative political themes.

Linguistically, the practice of what is called “political correctness” seems to be rooted in a desire to

eliminate exclusion of various identity groups based on language usage. According to the Sapir-Whorf, orWhorfian, hypothesis, our perception of reality is determined by our thought processes, which areinfluenced by the language we use. In this way language shapes our reality and tells us how to think aboutand respond to that reality. Language also reveals and promotes our biases. Therefore, according to thehypothesis, using sexist language promotes sexism and using racial language promotes racism.

Those who are most strongly opposed to so-called “political correctness” view it as censorship and acurtailment of freedom of speech that places limits on debates in the public arena. They contend that such

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language boundaries inevitably lead to self-censorship and restrictions on behaviour. They further believethat political correctness perceives offensive language where none exists. Others believe that “political

correctness” or “politically correct” has been used as an epithet to stop legitimate attempts to curb hate

speech and minimize exclusionary speech practices. Ultimately, the ongoing discussion surrounding political correctness seems to centre on language, naming, and whose definitions are accepted.10

Katz, a professor and researcher at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, examinesPC from a critical perspective, in relation to the destructive effects this totalitarian social doctrinewith Marxist origins has had on the American culture in the past decades:

Political correctness is the narrowing of the range of acceptable opinions to those held by a small group thatenforces it. It is an attempt, often successful, to coerce the majority to accept the opinions of the enforcinggroup by suppressing any contrary opinion and making independent thought unacceptable. The enforcinggroup may be afraid of the the [sic!] consequences of open discussion, or of making the facts known. Itgenerally has a practical motivation: it wants something of value (money, jobs, special privileges) to whichit has a weak claim. So it attempts to enforce its claim by ruling any disagreement from it outside the

bounds of acceptable discourse. This is unnecessary when the claim is self-evidently strong, but may be theonly means of getting the claim accepted when it is weak.

Political correctness also comes with an admixture of moral indignation. It removes the issue from theordinary give-and-take of rational argument or the political process by injecting intense emotion. In my

personal episode of politically correct thought, thinking of people dying for lack of an organ aroused strongfeelings. Political correctness uses language with strong connotations, such as “discrimination” and“racism,” or evokes ancient wrongs in order to associate any disagreement with support of past abuses.This emotional blackmail is effective in a self-consciously privileged environment, and what environmentis more self-consciously privileged than an American university, populated with undergraduates who have

been spoiled for eighteen years by overindulgent and affluent parents and with tenured professors, many ofwhom are still racked with guilt for having dodged the draft during the Vietnam war? 11

O’Neill, a statistics lecturer in the School of Physical, Environmental, and MathematicalSciences at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy inCanberra, provides a sagacious and sharp critique of the PC, debunks its false and deceptiveclaims and denounces the malicious effects that result from its application. The scholar beginshis critical discussion with a reiteration of the fraudulent claims the PC “evangelists” propagatein defense of their “benevolent” and “beneficial” language reconstruction agenda:

Defenders of politically correct language claim that it is a civilizing influence on society, that it discouragesthe use of words that have negative or offensive connotations and thereby grants respect to people who arethe victims of unfair stereotypes. In this view, the purpose and effect of politically correct language are to

prevent bullying and offensive behavior and to replace terms loaded with offensive undertones withallegedly impartial words. So, for example, people are discouraged from referring to someone with amental disability as “mentally retarded” and instead encouraged to refer to him as being “differently abled”

or as “having special needs.” Similarly, one can no longer refer to “garbagemen” or even the gender -neutral

“garbage collectors”—no, they are “environmental service workers,” thank you very much!

Though opposed to the term political correctness, journalist Polly Toynbee explains the drive for this kindof language: “The phrase ‘political correctness’ was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say

Paki, spastic or queer, all those who still want to pick on anyone not like them, playground bullies whonever grew up. The politically correct society is the civilised society, however much some may squirm atthe more inelegant official circumlocutions designed to avoid offence. Inelegance is better than bile”

(2009).


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Her fellow journalist Will Hutton offers a similar defense , saying that “it matters profoundly what we say.It is an advance that it is no longer possible to call blacks niggers and that sexist banter in the workplace isunderstood to be oppressive and abusive. It is right that the groups in society that used to be written off asmentally retarded are recognised as having special needs” (2001).12

O’Neill dismisses the claims that the artificial and dictatorial PC limits and restraints

imposed on language use have the positive and beneficial effect to discourage “the use of wordsthat have negative or offensive connotations and thereby grant[s] respect to people who are thevictims of unfair stereotypes,” and that its aim is “to prevent bullying and offensive behavior andto replace terms loaded with offensive undertones with allegedly impartial words,” and debunkssuch preposterous and fallacious claims through the careful examination of the semantics of thewords under dispute:

To understand the drive for politically correct language, it is important to understand the problem that thislanguage is allegedly intended to solve. To understand this problem, we need to examine the etymology ofwords (that is, the history of words and how their meaning changes over time). Why is mentally retarded a

bad term? When and how is it offensive? Is it an inherently offensive term, or does something in the waythat it is delivered make it so? Was it always this way, or was it once politically correct?

The word’s lexicology does not indicate a hostile meaning. To “retard” something means to hinder orimpede it, to make it slower or diminish its development or progress in some way.2 Thus, to describesomeone as “mentally retarded” literally means that their mental processes are somehow impeded,hindered, diminished, or slowed down. This meaning is certainly accurate, and it is a neutral description

because the term itself does not imply a value judgment about such diminished mental functioning.

Perhaps, though, this fact has a certain implicit negative connotation in its very recognition. After all, it istrue that a properly functioning brain is preferable to a brain that is functioning in an impaired ordiminished manner. Hence, to recognize that someone is “mentally retarded” is immediately to make thelogical jump to the value judgment that this condition is a bad thing — that the person would be better off ifhe were not mentally retarded, and isn’t it a shame that he is. This po ssibility, however, is not enough towarrant the claim that the term is offensive — that is, unless having true facts brought to our attention isitself offensive.

So where does the alleged rudeness of the term retarded originally come from? If not from the term’sliteral meaning, it must come from its delivery: the tone and context in which it is delivered. If people usethe term mentally retarded as an insult to refer to others with scorn through a spiteful tone of voice or in aninsulting context, the term will certainly be offensive. It is offensive in these cases precisely because it isintended to be and because its delivery reveals this intention. Thus, when a playground bully says tosomeone he doesn’t like: “Ha, ha, you’re stupid—you’re retarded !” the term retarded takes on an offensivemeaning because this meaning is what the bully intends. His tone of voice and general attitude toward histarget make clear that he is not soberly trying to diagnose the latter’s cognitive functioning with a neutral

medical descriptor — no, he is taunting him.

The bully’s insult of his victim has two effects. Its main (intended) effect is to assert that the person’s

mental skills are impaired and to taunt the person about this alleged impairment. Its secondary effect is to

imply that people who are mentally retarded should be ashamed of this condition — to declare that it is ashameful characteristic worthy of ridicule. (After all, if it is not, then how is it an insult?) If enoughschoolyard bullies use the term retarded in this way, then over time the term may take on an additionalmeaning, widely recognized as being intended as an insult. Moreover, the term may also become imbuedwith the insult’s implicit value judgment that mental retardation is shameful and worthy of ridicule.

Politically correct language is allegedly designed to solve this bullying problem and its etymological by- product. The practitioners of political correctness adopt the strategy of periodically replacing the wordsused as insults with new terms in an effort to avoid negative connotations imbued — or allegedly imbued — in existing terms.


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Many terms pertaining to mental retardation have been replaced in this quest. The terms moron, idiot,mentally retarded , and others began their existence as medical descriptors without implicit value judgmentsor rudeness built into them.3 Over time, as people used them as insults (almost always directed at peoplewho were not idiots, morons, or mentally retarded), these terms became imbued with negativeconnotations, including the implicit suggestion that being an idiot, a moron, or a mentally retarded person is

shameful.413

The researcher’s examination of the empirical semantic evidence related to the sense andthe meaning or usage of the “offensive” and therefore interdicted words and the fallacious logicthat supports the PC claims also reveals the reasons the PC strategy will fail in the long term:

The word-replacement strategy that the advocates of political correctness pursue does not resolve itself in asingle iteration or, indeed, in any number of iterations. Given the nature of the process of semantic change,the reason for this endlessness should be obvious. Because the creation of a new, politically correct termfor, say, mental retardation does not change the underlying realities or the social dynamics that pertain tothe subject, the new term gradually enters common circulation, and speakers use it in the same way thatthey previously used the preceding term. Those who wish to use it as a neutral descriptor do so, and thosewho wish to use it as an insulting term use it in that way.

The bullies remain bullies, and they do not curb their actions merely because a new word is now commonlyused to refer to the characteristics that they wish to use as a basis for insulting people. A bully whoformerly used the word retarded as a term of scorn can just as easily use the euphemism differently abled as a term of scorn by using a malicious tone of voice. Indeed, as feminist author Germaine Greer notes, “Itis the fate of euphemisms to lose their function rapidly by association with the actuality of what theydesignate, so that they must be regularly replaced with euphemisms for themselves” (1971, 298).

The word-replacement strategy of political correctness is therefore a cyclical one, giving rise to what has been dubbed “the euphemism treadmill” (Pinker 1994). In this process, an initially neutral term (anorthophemism) gradually takes on negative connotations through its use as an insult and thereby becomes amalicious term (a dysphemism). It is then replaced with a politically correct term (a euphemism), whichgradually comes into common use and is then seen as the appropriate neutral expression (even if its

lexicographical characteristics make it nonneutral). This process repeats itself again and again, as isillustrated in figure 1.

The “euphemism treadmill” is a slow process, but one that is nonetheless cyclical. Even when a term thatresolves the problem of negative semantic change appears to have been found, this victory is short-lived,and the new, neutral word eventually enters into circulation and is used by bullies as an insult. As long asthe social dynamics remain the same, the cycle repeats itself indefinitely, resulting in a growing list ofdiscarded dysphemisms — words such as idiot, moron, spastic, and so forth.

Contradicting the claims made by advocates of politically correct language, linguist Armin Burkhardtexplains that “as long as the prevailing taboo or discrimination prevails, another euphemism will be found

or created by the speakers to replace the expression which is no longer felt to be euphemistic, and so on.The very moment a euphemism is commonly accepted, its former meaning fades and the search for a new

euphemistic expression begins. Such euphemisations may occur several times throughout language historywith regard to the same referent. . . . This explains why political correctness can never be successful over along period of time” (Burkhardt 2010, 363).14

O’Neill looks at the penalties that the PC language manipulation will bring, and mentionsthree dire consequences that will impact a socio-political and economic world altered under thePC construct: (1) the immediate negative effect will be the development of a twisted anddishonest language that hides the truth under a pretense of kindness and fairness to the“disadvantaged,” (2) the long term consequence will be the ignorance and neglect of those in


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need, and (3) the ultimate consequence will be the development of a social context wherefalsehood and deception will rule and where honest and direct language will be censured and punished as evil:

Constant changes in terms, though a nuisance, would not be a serious problem if the new descriptorschosen as politically correct terms retained the old terms’ clarity and accuracy. But they do not do so. In

practice, the drive for politically correct language is a devolution toward increasingly vague andeuphemistic terms, a progression from honesty and clarity to dishonesty and obscurity.

Recall that the second alleged purpose of politically correct language is to discourage the reflexive use ofwords and thereby to promote conscious thinking about how to describe others fairly on their merits. Infact, however, the drive for politically correct language itself most aggressively promotes the reflexive useof words without thought as to correct description.

Observe that, in practice, political correctness achieves precisely the opposite of studious description.Politically correct language is narrow, faddish, and highly reflexive in character, consisting in large part ofeuphemisms. It sometimes promotes or amounts to outright dishonesty. Moreover, the drive for this kind oflanguage involves aggressive attempts to delegitimize the use of politically incorrect terms that fail to keepup with current fashions. Accurately describing a person with correct and meaningful descriptors, even in a

context where such description is necessary or useful, is treated as boorish or even sinister if sentences arenot couched in the latest euphemisms. In many cases, politically correct language is designed to avoid orcover up clear and meaningful descriptions by promoting hostility toward candid and accurate descriptorsthat strip away these euphemisms.15

The unavoidable and sad consequence that follows when an endless euphemistic chainreplaces direct and honest words in the social interaction is that those in special need for supportare ignored and shunned due to the stigma that comes with the recognition of their actual andreal condition:

The alleged sensitivity of the practitioners of political correctness is often betrayed by the vitriolic way theytreat people who use politically incorrect language in contexts where the speakers clearly intend no offense.

Moreover, even with regard to their alleged desire to be sensitive and helpful to the downtrodden, the practitioners of political correctness show a very warped view of sensitivity.

Let us suppose that you have a certain way of treating the people you meet and that you are already a fairlycourteous and nice person. Ask yourself: What kind of extra help and courtesy should you afford to a manwho has no legs and moves around in a wheelchair? If you thought that it might be nice to open doors forhim or to pass him things that are out of reach when required, then good for you. Now ask yourself: Whatkind of extra help and courtesy should you afford to a person who is differently abled? If you thought ofnothing, or at least nothing in particular, then you have good reason. So what if that person is differentlyabled? Everyone is! Hence, by implication, the person in question requires no extra help or courtesy

beyond the normal help and courtesy extended to everyone.

Thus, if we take the politically correct euphemism at its word, we see that it is actually not useful at all inhelping those it is supposedly intended to help. By suppressing information, the term actually encouragesus to ignore any special needs a person has. Only by recognizing the term as a euphemism and by making aseparate (nonverbal) identification of the actual characteristics of the person under consideration can we actappropriately and sensitively. Even if we never speak any politically incorrect words, in our minds weidentify what we are actually confronting, and we proceed accordingly.

Now try another one. Ask yourself: What kind of extra help and courtesy should you afford to a personwho has a serious mental disability, such that he has the intelligence of a young child? If you thought that itwould be a good idea to help him with what he is doing and perhaps to look out for his welfare, as youwould with an actual child, then good for you. Now ask yourself: What kind of extra help and courtesy


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should you afford to a person who has specia l needs? If you immediately ask, “What special needs?” thatquestion is only natural. Again, the politically correct term actually impedes the identification ofinformation that is required to help the person. Again, only by recognizing the term as a euphemism and bymaking a separate (nonverbal) identification that the person is actually mentally retarded can we offer anyhelp.

To illustrate the absurdity of the belief that euphemistic expression assists the downtrodden, author WilliamSafire quotes the f ollowing sarcastic remark from a woman living in a slum: “I used to think I was poor.Then they told me I wasn’t poor, I was needy. They told me it was self -defeating to think of myself asneedy, I was deprived. Then they told me underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don’thave a dime. But I have a great vocabulary” (qtd. in Burkhardt 2010, 363).

All of these examples are instances of an important general principle: sensitivity must always be sensitivityto things that exist in reality. We cannot be sensitive about a characteristic or circumstance that we refuseto acknowledge as fact. Thus, politically correct language does not assist us in helping others, but actuallyimpairs our ability to do so by banishing all noneuphemistic descriptors of the problem. The entireoperation of politically correct language operates on a nudge-and-a-wink level, with sensible actions being

possible only by reading through the euphemisms to the underlying reality that they are designed tosuppress.5 16

The truth falsification and fact distortion that the Political Correctness causes in thehuman interaction through a perverted and degraded language (1) generates the confidence thatwrong has made right and that discrimination has been repressed or eradicated, and (2) givessome people the chance to manufacture offense and produce false grievances against innocent people:

Contrary to the claims of those who support the drive for politically correct language, such speech does notreduce offensive behavior or encourage conscious thinking about individual merits. In fact, it does theopposite: it relegates more and more terms to the exclusive domain of schoolyard bullies, while requiringunthinking, reflexive adherence to the latest stupid language fashions.

One of the most unfortunate effects of the drive for political correctness is that it encourages people tomanufacture grievances and offense in innocuous situations, even where the speaker manifests no belligerent intent. The enemy of political correctness is not the schoolyard bully, but the studious, literate person who understands the proper meaning of words and wants to use them correctly. The allegation thatthe very concept of political correctness is only an insidious right-wing myth cannot be taken seriously.One simply cannot insist that everyone should use terms such as differently abled while asserting that thenotion of political correctness is a myth. The very nature of this preposterous euphemism demonstrates theeffort that is being brought to bear to remove normative judgments from social discourse. It represents aclear attempt to imply (falsely) that disabilities are not really disabilities because We — the politicallycorrect elite — say so. This term and many others are not mere “inelegant circumlocutions’” they are

propaganda.

At the heart of politically correct language lies dishonesty, not civility. This reality is manifested in the preference for euphemism over literalism, for vagueness over specificity, and for propaganda over honesty.The politically correct society is not the civilized society, but rather the dishonest society.17

PC Application to World Literature

That the entire Political Correctness notion is a laughable pseudo-scientific concoctionthat comes from ignorant, illiterate, and incompetent individuals becomes obvious when onetakes a look at the ludicrous manner in which it has been applied to some classical works in theEnglish literature. Messent, the author of the Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain, comments


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on the comical attempts to “amend” and “improve” Twain’s books in order to make themconform to the Political Correctness foolish guidelines. He states in The Guardian:

So, Mark Twain stays in the news even 100 years after his death. First, with the initial volume of hisAutobiography, finally published in the form planned by the author. Second, with the controversy stirred up

by a "new" edition of Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in which the offensive racial

epithets "injun" and "nigger" are replaced by "Indian" and "slave" respectively.

Undoubtedly the use of the word "nigger" – surely the most inflammatory word in the English language – makes Huckleberry Finn a tricky novel to teach. The book has recently repeatedly been judged asunsuitable for schoolchildren to study in the US educational system – and one can fully understand thefeelings of anger and humiliation that many African American children and parents feel at having such aword repeatedly spoken in the classroom (the word appears 219 times in Twain's book).

But that is not necessarily a reason for replacing it with a gentler (bowdlerised) term. Twain wasundoubtedly anti-racist. Friends with African American educator Booker T Washington, he co-chaired the1906 Silver Jubilee fundraiser at Carnegie Hall for the Tuskegee Institute – a school run by Washington inAlabama to further “the intellectual and moral and religious life of the [African American] people.” He also

personally helped fund one of Yale Law School’s first African American students, explaining: “We haveground the manhood out of them [African Americans], and the shame is ours, not theirs, and we should pay

for it.” And his repeated use of that derogatory term in Huckleberry Finn is absolutely deliberate, ringingwith irony. When Huck ’s father, poor and drunken white trash by any standard, learns that “a free nigger ...from Ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man ... a p’fessor in a college” is allowed to vote, hereports: “Well, that let me out ... I says I ’ll never vote agin ... [A]nd the country may rot for all me. ” It isvery clear here whose racial side Twain is on. Similarly when Aunt Sally asks if anyone was hurt in areported riverboat explosion, and Huck himself answers “ No'm. Killed a nigger,” she replies, “Well, it'slucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.” The whole force of the passage lies in casual acceptance ofthe African American’s dehumanised status, even by Huck, whose socially-inherited language and way ofthinking stands firm despite all he has learnt in his journey down-river of the humanity, warmth andaffection of the escaped slave Jim – the person who truly acts as a father to him.

Language counts here. As Twain himself said: “The difference between the almost right word and the rightword is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” I respect themotivation of Alan Gribben, the senior Twain scholar who is responsible for the new edition, and who

wishes to bring the book back into easy classroom use, believing “that a significant number of schoolteachers, college instructors, and general readers will welcome the option of an edition of Twain's ... novelsthat spares the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.”

But it’s exactly that vitriol and its unacceptable nature that Twain intended to capture in the book as itstands. Perhaps this is not a book for younger readers. Perhaps it is a book that needs careful handling byteachers at high school and even university level as they put it in its larger discursive context, explain howthe irony works, and the enormous harm that racist language can do. But to tamper with the author ’s words

because of the sensibilities of present-day readers is unacceptable. The minute you do this, the minute thisstops being the book that Twain wrote.18

Messent’s article was followed the next day by a humorous article in The New York Times in which the writer made fun of Gribben, “the senior Twain scholar ,” and ridiculed his

foolish attempts to “sanitize” Twain’s books: “All modern American literature,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn.’”

Being an iconic classic, however, hasn’t protected “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from being banned, bowdlerized and bleeped. It hasn’t protected the novel from being cleaned up, updated and “improved.”

A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at AuburnUniversity, at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/05/huckleberry-finn-edition-censors-n-wordhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/30/mark-twain-american-sarah-churchwellhttp://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0105/The-n-word-gone-from-Huck-Finn-what-would-Mark-Twain-sayhttp://www.twainquotes.com/19060123.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/samuel_langhorne_clemens/index.html?inline=nyt-perhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/samuel_langhorne_clemens/index.html?inline=nyt-perhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/samuel_langhorne_clemens/index.html?inline=nyt-perhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/samuel_langhorne_clemens/index.html?inline=nyt-perhttp://www.twainquotes.com/19060123.htmlhttp://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0105/The-n-word-gone-from-Huck-Finn-what-would-Mark-Twain-sayhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/30/mark-twain-american-sarah-churchwellhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/05/huckleberry-finn-edition-censors-n-word


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“nigger” with “slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racialepithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as areflection of mid-19th-century social attitudes along the Mississippi River.

Mr. Gribben has said he worried that the N-word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and thathe thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to

spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Never mind that today nigger isused by many rappers, who have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching theepithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as

property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.19

Kakutani also mentions that such misguided attempts to “clean up” the pages in theclassic American and Universal literature occur again and again, and sometimes with the bestintentions:

Controversies over “Huckleberry Finn” occur with predictable regularity. In 2009, just before Barack Obama’sinauguration, a high school teacher named John Foley wrote a guest column in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in whichhe asserted that “Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men,” don’t belong on the curriculumanymore. “The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms,” he wrote. “Barack Obama is

president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go.”20

The writer explains that those who attempt such inappropriate book redaction and ventureto “ bleach” the classics and the modern works of literature intrude on the authors’ rights to theirworks and commit immoral and lawless acts:

Haven’t we learned by now that r emoving books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure toclassic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such

books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerfulindictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as anopportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact bookson school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashingthem or pretending they do not exist.

Mr. Gribben’s effort to update “Huckleberry Finn” (published in an edition with “The Adventures of Tom

Sawyer” by NewSouth Books), like Mr. Foley’s assertion that it’s an old book and “we’re ready for new,”ratifies the narcissistic contemporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, playsand poetry from other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s democratic ideals.It’s like the politically correct efforts in the ’80s to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the

canon because their work does not feature enough women or projects colonialist attitudes.

Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property, whether a book is a classic or not.

Tampering with a writer’s words underscores both editors’ extraordinary hubris and a cavalier attitude

embraced by more and more people in this day of mash-ups, sampling and digital books — the attitude thatall texts are fungible, that readers are entitled to alter as they please, that the very idea of authorship is old-fashioned.

Such witch hunts are not new. Chaucer’s and Dahl’s rights have been violated in similarPolitical Correctness efforts to mutilate timeless literature, Shakespeare has been “adapted” and“modernized,” and the Bible’s text has been twisted and falsified. Numerous other belletristicworks have been ruined in this relentless and f oolish “correctness” mania. Even Evangelicals andConservatives have climbed on the wagon and have helped in the destruction:

Efforts to sanitize classic literature have a long, undistinguished history. Everything from Chaucer’s

“Canterbury Tales” to Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have been challenged or have

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/books/05huck.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/books/05huck.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/394832_nword06.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/394832_nword06.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/394832_nword06.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/394832_nword06.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/394832_nword06.htmlhttp://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/394832_nword06.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/books/05huck.html


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suffered at the hands of uptight editors. There have even been purified versions of the Bible (all that sexand violence!). Sometimes the urge to expurgate (if not outright ban) comes from the right, evangelicalsand conservatives, worried about blasphemy, profane language and sexual innuendo. Fundamentalistgroups, for instance, have tried to have dictionaries banned because of definitions offered for words likehot, tail, ball and nuts.

In other cases the drive to sanitize comes from the left, eager to impose its own multicultural, feministworldviews and worried about offending religious or ethnic groups. Michael Radford’s 2004 film version

of “The Merchant of Venice” (starring Al Pacino) revised the play to elide potentially offensive material,serving up a nicer, more sympathetic Shylock and blunting tough questions about anti-Semitism. Moreabsurdly, a British theater company in 2002 changed the title of its production of “The Hunchback of NotreDame” to “The Bellringer of Notre Dame.”

Whether it comes from conservatives or liberals, there is a patronizing Big Brother aspect to these literaryfumigations. We, the censors, need to protect you, the naïve, delicate reader. We, the editors, need to policewriters (even those from other eras), who might have penned something that might be offensive to someonesometime. According to Noel Perrin’s 1969 book, “Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books

in England and America,” Victorians explained their distaste for the colorful, earthy works of 18th-centurywriters like Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding by invoking the principle of “moral progress” and their

own ethical superiority: “People in the 18th century, and earlier, didn’t take offense at coarse passages, because they were coarse themselves.”

In 1807 Thomas Bowdler — an English doctor, from whose name comes the verb bowdlerize — and hissister published the first edition of an expurgated Shakespeare, which he argued would be more appropriatefor women and children than the original, with its bawdy language and naughty double-entendres. In their“Family Shakespeare” version of “Romeo and Juliet,” Mercutio’s playfully suggestive line “the bawdy

hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon” is changed to the far blander “the hand of the dial is nowupon the point of noon.” Similarly, Iago’s declaration in “Othello” that “your daughter and the Moor are

now making the beast with two backs” is changed to “your daughter and the Moor are now together.”

This is the academic equivalent of Ed Sullivan in 1967 prudishly making the Rolling Stones change “Let’s

spend the night together” to “Let’s spend some time together.” Or Cole Porter having to change “cocaine”

in “I Get a Kick Out of You” to “perfume in Spain.”

Euphemisms are sometimes pushed on writers by their publishers. Rinehart & Company persuaded NormanMailer to use “fug” in his 1948 novel “The Naked and the Dead” instead of the F-word. Mailer later saidthe incident caused him “great embarrassment” because Tallulah Bankhead’s press agent supposedly

planted a story in the papers that went, “Oh, hello, you’re Norman Mailer. You’re the young man that

doesn’t know how to spell.”

Some years later Ballantine Books published an expurgated version of “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’scelebrated sci-fi classic about book banning, in which words like “hell” and “abortion” were deleted; it wasreportedly 13 years before Mr. Bradbury became aware of the changes and demanded that the originalversion be restored.

Although it’s hard to imagine a theater company today using one of Shakespeare adaptations — say,

changing “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” in “Macbeth” to “out, crimson spot!” — the language police arestaging a comeback. Not just with an expurgated “Huckleberry Finn” but with political efforts to clampdown on objectionable language. Last year The Boston Globe reported that California lawmakers firstvoted for, then tabled a resolution declaring a No Cuss Week, that South Carolina had debated a sweepinganti-profanity bill, and that conservative groups like the Parents Television Council have complained aboutvulgarities creeping into family-hour shows on network television.

But while James V. O’Connor, author of the book “Cuss Control,” argues that people can and should find

word substitutions, even his own Web site grants Rhett Butler a “poetic license” exemption in “Gone Withthe Wind.” “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot”? Now that’s damnable. 21

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2071821.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2071821.stmhttp://www.boston.com/lifestyle/family/articles/2010/03/11/whats_up_with_all_the_profanity/http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/family/articles/2010/03/11/whats_up_with_all_the_profanity/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2071821.stm


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Invective in Literature and Science

Those who want to extend Political Correctness to all the belletristic and scientific worksand consider themselves the elite above “low” language are, besides inept, also ignorant andilliterate. Their provincial “education,” or something that might be named with such terms whenone feels generous, has failed to secure the background that would have informed them that thereis a long, interesting, and relevant tradition of invective in the universal literature all through thecenturies. Goodman mentions an odd lawsuit between two writers due to one writer’s “uncivillanguage” that appeared unacceptable to the second writer:

I called Lillian Hellman's lawyer the other day to ask what had become of the $2.25 million libel suit thatshe initiated against Mary McCarthy more than three years ago. He promised that it would finally come totrial this year. If this suit, which has elicited reservations even among those who hold a higher opinion ofMiss Hellman's career than Miss McCarthy does, should actually reach the courtroom, no matter what the

jury decides it is bound to diminish Miss McCarthy's purse, Miss Hellman's reputation as a friend of freeexpression and the vigor of literary dispute in America, none of which is in particularly robust shape.

The incident that roused Miss Hellman to litigation was an appearance by Miss McCarthy on the Dick

Cavett Show over public television in January 1980. In response to Mr. Cavett's request for examples of“overpraised writers,” Miss McCarthy named Lillian Hellman, “who I think is terribly overrated, a badwriter and a dishonest writer.” When Mr.Cavett asked what she meant by “dishonest,” Miss McCarthyresponded, “Everything ... every word she writes is a lie including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” 22

The invectives McCarthy used against Hellman, though, are nothing compared with thewords that writers like Dr. Johnson, Disraeli, Twain, and Carlyle used against some renownedfellow writers and publishers. Continues Goodman:

It may be taken as a sign of our times or of Miss Hellman's sensibilities that so mild an observation should be the cause of the “mental pain and anguish” and the fear of “ being injured in her profession” thatconstitute her complaint against Miss McCarthy and the show’s producers. After all, Miss McCarthy didnot say of Miss Hellman's work, as Dr. Johnson did of Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, “They teachthe morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master. ” Although their differences have a political aswell as a literary cast, Miss McCarthy did not say of Miss Hellman, as Disraeli said of a political opponent,“He has committed every crime that does not require courage.” How gentle the epithet “dishonest” seemsnext to Mark Twain's charge that Kipling “did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, thanany other individual that ever wrote.”

If Miss Hellman deserves $500,000 in punitive damages from Miss McCarthy, what did Dr. Johnsondeserve from Horace Walpole for calling him “a babbling old woman” and adding that “ prejudice and

bigotry, and pride and presumption, and arrogance and pedantry are the hags that brew his ink.”?Swinburne never brought suit against Carlyle for saying of him, “I have no wish to know anyone sitting ina sewer and adding to it.” Swinburne was probably relieved that Carlyle did not treat him as he treatedEmerson (“a gap-toothed and hoary-headed ape ... who now in his dotage spits and chatters from a dirtier

perch of his own finding and fouling”) or Whitman (“under the dirty clumsy paws of a harper whose

plectrum is a muck-rake, any tune will become a chaos of disorder ”) or Charles Lamb (

“I sincerely believe(him) to be in some considerable degree insane”). What Pope or Swift might have done to Miss Hellman

has no place in a family newspaper.

If among the viewers of the Cavett show that fateful night there was a chap who believed that MissHellman sometimes told the truth, would Miss McCarthy's wisecrack have altered his opinion and so done$1.75 million worth of damage to Miss Hellman's professional standing? Not if he knew anything about thehyperbolic customs of their trade. Miss McCarthy’s “everything” was comfortably within the conventionsof the literary insult.


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Here is Oscar Wilde summing up George Meredith: “As a writer, he has mastered everything exceptlanguage; as a novelist, he can do everything except tell a story; as an artist, he is everything exceptarticulate.” Shaw, in a kindly mood, told Chesterton: “I know everything you say is bunkum, though a fairamount of it is inspired bunkum.” The charge of lying is a common weapon in the literary political arsenal.Miss McCarthy's jibe is but a firecracker beside the bomb that Sinclair Lewis dropped on a prominent criticwho had annoyed him: “I denounce Mr. Bernard De Voto as a fool and a tedious and egotistical fool, as a

liar and a pompous and boresome liar.”23

Hellman must be warned, believes Goodman, that to feel offended by commonhyperboles used among writers and even common language speakers will have a price tag thatmight not be worth the time and expenses of those offended. He states:

Miss McCarthy's distaste for Miss Hellman has two sources. There is Miss Hellman’s success as a writer ofmiddlebrow melodrama, a line of work that highbrow critics like Miss McCarthy naturally scorn. But moreto the point is Miss Hellman's political past, of which she not long ago reminded the world in “ScoundrelTime,” her memoir of the 1940’s and 50’s. In the years shortly before and after World War II, when theAmerican left was riven by the issue of Soviet totalitarianism, Miss Hellman was counted among thefriends of Stalin’s Russia, while Miss McCarthy was prominent among those who attacked it.

The Stalinist versus anti-Stalinist dispute is not likely to die as long as those who bled over it live, and MissMcCarthy is by no means alone in finding “Scoundrel Time” at variance with veracity. Still, Miss Hellmanis surely entitled to her day in court. The question is whether the right court for writers is not publicopinion. As Miss Hellman contemplates proceeding against Miss McCarthy, she might consider whetherher efforts to punish another writer with the instruments of the law may not invite uncomfortablecomparisons with methods used in the country she once defended.24

The use of invective as a rhetorical and oratorical tool is not recent, and does notoriginate with the British or American writers — classic or modern. Among those who used theinvective as a successful persuasive device is Cicero, a Roman writer, orator, critic, and philosopher without peer who defined the “Ciceronian period,” in the development of the Latinlanguage and literature. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature states about him:

Ciceronian period \sis-ə-‘rō-nē-ən\The first great age of Latin literature, from approximately 70 to 43 BC;together with the following AUGUSTAN AGE, it forms the Golden Age of Latin literature. The politicaland literary scene was dominated by Cicero, a statesman, orator, poet, critic, and philosopher who perfectedthe Latin language as a literary medium, expressing abstract and complicated thoughts with clarity andcreating the important quantitative prose rhythm. Cicero’s influence on Latin prose was so great thatsubsequent prose – not only in Latin but in later vernacular languages up to the 19th century – waseither a reaction against or a return to his style [emphasis added]. 25

Some of the most famous speeches Cicero produced were the four against Catiline, theRoman Senator who attempted to overthrow the Roman Republic. Ross explains the politicalsituation of the time in the following words when she discusses the ethos Cicero used in hisspeech to accuse the Senator:

To better understand the purpose of Cicero’s speech, one must examine the context within which it wasgiven. By the end of October, 63 BCE, Catiline had allegedly already been stirring up civil unrest in Rome.Of the greatest concern was the mustering of an army under Manlius at Faesulae. Cicero c laims, “Thenumber of the enemy increases from day to day, but we see [Catiline,] the general of the camp and theleader of the enemy, daily attempting some internal harm to the Republic within the walls and even in theSenate.”

1 The circumstances were such that Cicero was given “an extremely severe decree” 2 from theSenate, through which he could execute Catiline without trial, as had happened in the past against thosewho had incited rebellion, such as Gaius Gracchus, Marcus Fulvius, and Lucius Saturninus. However,

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Cicero could not simply execute Catiline and be done with the affair. The problem was that there was “no

hard evidence against Catiline,”3 no proof that Catiline was the one responsible for the civil unrest, or that

he was the one mustering forces against Rome. Since “the Senate [was] not sufficiently hostile to Catiline

to punish him,”4 Cicero therefore needed to wholly convince them of Catiline’s guilt befor e acting upon his

decree in order to avoid severe political backlash.26

In order to convince the Roman Senate of Catiline’s guilt, Cicero uses in his speechvarious rhetorical devices, among which are multiple rhetorical questions that silence the Romansenator, and numerous invectives. States Ross again:

Cicero constructs this authoritative consular ethos in several ways, the most distinctive being his use ofrhetorical questions. He begins his speech by asking Catiline, “How far [...] will you try our pat ience,Catiline?”12 Cicero continues to catalogue charges against Catiline, asking, “Do you dare deny it? Why areyou silent?”13 Because the format of the speech does not allow Catiline to answer these questions, “therhetoric makes a display of Catiline’s silence.”14 This is important for the purpose of building Cicero’scredibility in his accusations against Catiline, as Catiline’s “silence is evidence that Cicero is now [...]

speaking the hidden truth.”15 In other words, Cicero silences Catiline through his use of rhetoricalquestions, then uses this silence to give his accusations credibility. Ci cero’s questions silence not onlyCatiline, they also “silence the protests and deliberations of others,”

16 namely the senators present who may

oppose Cicero. This is done by “diverting the deliberative potential of these questions into invective bymaking Catiline the addressee.”17 In this way Cicero avoids opening a debate on what would otherwise bethe highly contested subject of Catiline’s guilt.27

Ross explains how Cicero calibrates the amount of invective used in his speech in orderto avoid an excessive use, cause damage to his own influence, and diminish the logical andfactual arguments that provide evidence that the Roman Senator Catiline is the main agent in the plot to overthrow the Republic:

Next, Cicero judiciously uses invective in order to turn the Senate against Catiline without compromisinghis own credibility. Cicero is careful in his use of invective, because he wishes to avoid the dismissal of hisargument as untrue. In the genre of invective, “the fact of an insult is what mat ters. The truth-value of thecontent of the insult is of only secondary importance, if not completely irrelevant.”23 Thus, the overuse ofinvective in Cicero’s speech would have been detrimental to his accusations against Catiline, as theirfactuality would have been dismissed by the Senate. Cicero avoids the use of many standard topics,including among others physical appearance, family origin, hypocrisy, and cowardice,24 which would haveencouraged “the audience to perceive the speech as a formal invective.”

25

Cicero further hints that Catiline is cruel to Roman citizens and allies, stating, “If my ser vants feared methe way your fellow citizens fear you, I should think I ought to leave home.”27 Finally, Cicero accusesCatiline of plundering and of the destruction of property, claiming, “Now you attack the entire Republic

openly and you involve the temples of the immortal gods, the houses of the city, the lives of us all, andfinally all Italy in ruin and destruction.”

28 The purpose of this invective is to turn the Senate againstCatiline, and thereby gain their support. Cicero convinces both the Senate and Catiline he has done this bymaking use of the silence he has imposed on these two through his rhetorical questions. He demands,“What is the matter, Catiline? Are you listening at all, do you notice the silence of these men? They do not

object, they are silent. Why are you awaiting a spoken command from men whose will you perceive in theirsilence?”29 In this way, Cicero asserts that anyone who takes issue with the accusations against Catiline willspeak up; since the Senate remains silent, Cicero concludes that all Senators agree with his perception ofevents.30 Thus, Cicero again averts deliberation, and gives his words authority, as he speaks for the Senateas a whole. By thus asserting that the Senate agrees with his stance, Cicero demonstrates to Catiline that theSenate is against him, and will support Cicero’s actions in stamping out the conspiracy; it is thereforeadvisable for Catiline to leave at once, since his conspiring has been made plain. In this way, through thecareful use of invective, he aims to convince the Senate and Catiline that the former is hostile towards thelatter, and to gain the unquestioning support of the Senate.


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Cicero is also careful in his use of invective in order to avoid any negative consequences to his own ethos.He foresees that he may be accused later that he had driven Catiline out of Rome with his invective, andthat this departure had not been Catiline’s plan at all. Cicero prevents this by claiming that his invective

will have had no effect on the plans of Catiline, that it is in Catiline’s nature to be seditious. Cicero te llsCatiline, “Nor are you such a man that shame has ever recalled you from wickedness, fear from danger, or

reason from madness.”31 In this way, Cicero “asserts that Catiline’s [planned] departure [...] has not been

affected by [himself].”

32

Cicero therefore preserves his consular ethos from accusations of uncalled-forcruelty towards Catiline; at the same time he builds this ethos by “presenting [his] concerned selflessnessand moral superiority”

33 by denouncing the crimes and nature of Catiline. In this way, Cicero reinforces hisconsular authority by demonstrating “his burdens, his knowledge, and his providence.”34 Overall, Cicerouses invective judiciously in order to gain the support of the Senate, as well as to construct his consularauthority, while maintaining the credibility of his accusations.28

Cicero’s judicious use of multiple and intense rhetorical devices among which the oralinvective is prominent, incisive, and effective, and ends with success in his first argument speechagainst Catiline. States Ross:

Therefore, for the purpose of gaining the unquestioning support of the Senate against Catiline, Ciceroconstructs an authoritative ethos in the First Catilinarian through his use of rhetorical questions, invective,and self-praise. His rhetorical questions silence Catiline and the Senate, while he alone holds any answers.He uses invective judiciously in order to turn the Senate against Catiline without jeopardizing either hiscredibility or his moral high ground. He balances self-praise with self-accusation, taking on both the blamefor the current crisis and the credit for its imminent resolution. His success in convincing the Senate ofCatiline’s guilt and in gaining their support can be seen in the events that followed Cicero’s speech on themorning of November 7, 63 BCE. Catiline left Rome in disgrace, and his army was later defeated. Cicero’s

handling of the conspiracy became his crowning achievement as consul. Thus the First Catilinarian fulfilledits purpose.29

The spoken and written invectives in arguments that defend political or religious causeshave not been limited to the Roman world. There are multiple examples of pungent rhetoricaldiatribes in the modern and current belletristic literature. In her article, Jaqua provides samples

from the works of some classical writers that contain some of the most acid language readersmight encounter. She mentions, for example, Kent’s vicious and heartless attack on Oswald inShakespeare’s King Lear Act 2 Scene 2:

Invective (also known as ‘vituperation’) is language that denounces or casts blame on somebody or

something. Invective can be highly abusive, such as

A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-

pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-

serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service,

and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir to a mongrel

bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deni’st the least syllable of thy addition.

~ William Shakespeare, King Lear, II.230

The author then continues her discussion on invective with quotes from an article written by Furey, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, thatrefers to Martin Luther’s vituperations against the Pope in his 95 Theses and to other famousChristian theologians or scholars who did not hesitate to pepper their works with offensive wordsin their attacks against those who did not agree with them about certain creeds or perspectives:


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Invectives were a part of public discourse. For example, Martin Luther’s famous ninety -five theses containseveral invectives against the Pope of Rome, some of which are quite humorous and exaggerated:

Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are

there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a

Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial.

31

Such were common speeches that people slung against each other in centuries gone by. Constance M.Furey comments on how things have changed:

The scathing insults that fill texts by sixteenth-century Christian reformers can shock even a jaded modern

reader. In the prefatory letter to The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), for example, Martin

Luther begins by wishing for “grace and peace in Christ” before launching his attack on the “brainless

and illiterate beast in papist form” and its “whole filthy pack of … asses,” and concludes by exhorting his

reader to rise up against the Catholic hierarchy: “Continue courageously, noble sir; in this way the

disgrace of the Bohemian name will be abolished, and the sludge of the harlot’s lies and whoring shall

again be taken up in her breast.”

Or consider the nasty invectives by the English Lord Chancellor and future Catholic martyr, Thomas More,

against not only Luther but also Matthew Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English. More calls these

men the “devil’s disciples”: Luther “a pimp, an apostate, a rustic, and a friar”; and Tyndale “a babbler,

and a devil’s ape.” Even Desiderius Erasmus, the erudite Catholic humanist, filled his writings with insults

both satirical and blunt and proclaimed that theologians “are more stupid than any pig”. Fierce words

commonly appear in the midst of religious controversies, and one may choose to skim past this hyperbolic

outrage in search of the real message. Insulting rhetoric, however, does provide a sensitive barometer of

religious concerns in the sixteenth century and yields unexpectedly complex answers to a simple question.

What does negative speech accomplish?

~ Constance M. Furey, Invective and Discernment in Martin Luther, D. Erasmus, and Thomas More , Indiana University32

Jaqua muses about the present socio-cultural and political context in which the invectiveappears to be treated as a criminal offense, and concludes her article with an attempt to explainthe drastic shift in the intellectual and academic climate that has caused such a radical andthorough change in perspective. The unavoidable conclusion, in her perspective, is that theUnited States is no more a free nation and that freedom of speech and expression are no moretolerated here:

Only in free nations are invectives tolerated. The fact that the Athenians had the liberty to speak, even tocriticize their own political leaders was a sign of the freedom their society allowed them.

In later Roman times major authors such as Juvenal and Catullus also wrote extended invectives openly and publicly to defame political figures. Any piece from antiquity or from medieval times beginning withContra, as in Cicero’s Contra Catilinam (‘Against Catiline’) or St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra

Gentiles (‘The higest Against the Gentiles’) are invectives, speeches or writings ‘against’ (contra)

something or someone.

Cicero wrote many invectives. Demosthenes the Greek orator during the time of Philip II of Macedonwrote many invectives. His most famous is Against Philip of Macedon, whom Demosthenes saw as a threat


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to Athenian independence. Caesoninus Pliny wrote invectives against Greek physicians; the church fatherSt. Augustine of Hippo wrote invectives Against the Manicheans, and so forth.33

The scholar and researcher wonders whether we have become too sensitive or tooarrogant, too inclined to misunderstand and feel offended, and too conceited to tolerate what

seems like offensive language in our insatiable “lust for respect” when we feel that we

The Passionate God Who Confronts the Wicked Final Version

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