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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
August 29, 2010
Name-calling
Sticks and stones, according to a proverb I was taught as a child, will break my bones. But, it continued, names will never hurt me.This is not the only proverb I imbibed, nor even the most serviceable. Nor is it quite compendious; for no proverb can be, in itself, the source of all wisdom. Other proverbs will be needed to flesh it out; which is why, in the Bible, you will find a whole Book of Proverbs, designed to cover the whole ground. In the case of name-calling, I would like to acknowledge, for instance, the truth of another and related proverb learnt in childhood, which I have often watched being applied: "Put it on thick, a little will stick." I feel for middle-class, urban children today, who must come to adulthood almost proverb-free, and often enough with asthma, too, for they were exposed to neither wisdom nor dirt. Efforts made to sterilize both the intellectual and material environment, through political correctitude and hand cleanser, have left them unable to cope with the slightest exposure to the rich manure in which a civilization grows and flourishes. They're left with nothing to hurl except the occasional spit-ball. They are taught, for instance, that "words are deeds." This is almost the essence of post-modern etiquette: that one must avoid not only violent deeds, but even violent thoughts. Yet the person who suppresses all violent imaginings is left without any kind of insight into nature or society. He becomes, perforce, a prig. The sort who, for instance, took offence the other day, when I privately, casually, and I thought, good-naturedly, referred to some of my opponents as "commies and perverts." How dare I hurl such vile epithets? But note, I wasn't hurling, merely lobbing into play. Moreover, said opponents had thought nothing of calling me a "fascist" -- and in public, too! This hardly distressed me, because it missed by miles. As the son of a Spitfire pilot, taught at his knee to reject Statism and Socialism in any combination, the epithet "fascist" has no terrors for me; especially when uttered by people who embrace Statism and Socialism in every combination they can buy. Ditto for such epithets as "racist," and "sexist," when employed by persons who specify that I am white and male. Reviewed in serenity, it will be observed that they have scored own-goals. Conversely, I don't think I could have raised such a howl, had some part of my own name-calling not hit something. For here we come to a great secret in the art of name-calling: that the outrage increases with the accuracy of the epithets. It is why only epithets with some truth in them are likely to be banned. But, did you know that all human language is based on name-calling, from the most tangible to the most abstract? Verily, I have sometimes speculated that the first human word was an expletive, uttered when a cave man, who'd been breaking clam shells open with a big rock, mindlessly dropped it on a toe. Perhaps his mate found pleasure in his choice of phoneme, suddenly grasping its potential for analogy. (Beauty and truth are allied in this way.) The notion of philosophy spread from there. Consider the following magnificent opening to an article in the journal, World Affairs, by the novelist and essayist Claire Berlinski: "As the First General Law of Travel tells us, every nation is its stereotype. Americans are indeed fat and overbearing, Mexicans lazy and pilfering, Germans disciplined and perverted. The Turks, as everyone knows, are insane and deceitful. I say this affectionately. I live in Turkey. On good days, I love Turkey. But I have long since learned that its people are apt to go berserk on you for no reason whatsoever, and you just can't trust a word they say." It happens that I disagree with Berlinski -- who incidentally has a doctorate in international relations from Balliol College at Oxford -- about many things. At the root of them, I do not think psychotic radical Islam can be defeated by Western secularist consumerism. But when I read that passage I smiled, very wide, for I realized that we were observing the same world, and with the same tendency to eschew tinted lenses. And while I haven't read her novels, I might honestly shill for her non-fiction book, Menace in Europe. It is at least lively. Now, "liveliness" is in itself the enemy of the politically correct Left. Any incautious propensity toward truth-telling subverts their whole agenda; which is among the reasons I am in favour of doing that whenever an opportunity is presented. As George Grant used to say, the place to discuss abortion is at a polite academic sherry party. That would be rude, I can hear my reader thinking. And I agree with him, that civility requires "nice language" in almost all circumstances. Much hinges on that "almost," however, for when civility has grown into a shell around a lie, we need a rock to break it open. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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