The Death of Politics by Peter Wehner

Author:Peter Wehner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

WORDS AS INSTRUMENTS OF PERSUASION AND REASON

“Politics and the English Language” was published in 1946 in the journal Horizon and is perhaps George Orwell’s most famous and enduring essay. In it, he argues that the English language has become disfigured and degraded, “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” Language, particularly political language, is not just a manifestation of our decline but also an instrument in it.

The important thing to understand is that what Orwell is aiming for is clarity. He wants language to be an instrument to express rather than conceal or prevent thought, and he’s quite right about that.

Orwell’s thoughts on political language merit particular attention. “In our time,” he wrote, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Political language consists largely of “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” He added, “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

One senses in Orwell his frustration with the state of political speech because it often degrades what he considered precious, language; because it warped reality and the true nature of things; and because he understood the enormously high stakes in politics. If we get our politics wrong, Orwell knew, it can lead to misery and suffering, to gulags and concentration camps. “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism,” he said, “and for Democratic Socialism as I understand it.”

Orwell believed political language matters because politics matter, that the corruption of one leads to the corruption of the other. He believed language was a means to see the truth and to tell the truth. He believed, too, in a moral code, in concepts like justice and objective truth. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,” Orwell wrote in 1984.

[Winston Smith’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.63

The challenge of our time is to rediscover our best ends and noblest purposes. We can’t give up on

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