George Orwell painted a picture of the US in which democracy had been replaced
by dictatorship. Not the bully boy type that we usually associate with
the name Adolph Hitler. But with a much more insidious type: Rule by guile,
rather than by fist; rule by the perversion of language, rather than by
the jack boot.
To accomplish this, Big Brother, America's ruler, developed what Orwell
called Newspeak, such as “Slavery is Freedom!” and “War is Peace.” Big
Brother did it because, as Orwell explains in the book: “If thought corrupts
language, language can also corrupt thought. . . . The purpose of Newspeak
is to make all other modes of thought impossible.”
Well, was the book the product of what might be termed today the paranoia
of someone who saw a Communist under every bed and a Fascist in every private
club? Or was it a chilling portent of things to come? I'm going to let
you decide.
To lay the groundwork for your decision, I'm going to give you the entire
text of Proposition 209, word for word, as submitted to the voters in November
of 1996:
The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment
to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity,
or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education,
or public contracting.
In short, equality for all. No edges for anyone for any reason.
Yet given all that, I was handed a pamphlet while out running errands
a few days before Election Day. The headline on the first page, in big
type, was the following:
Vote No on Proposition 209 and Say Yes to Equal Opportunity.
And the name of the organization that produced this bit of Newspeak whose
purpose is to make all other modes of thought impossible? “Californians
for Justice.”
Think about it. |
