07.04.09
Name-calling versus accurate terminology
No aspect of my polemical writing – in particular, my BN blogging – brings me as much castigation as my use of the term “freedom-hater.” I’m frequently accused of casting my lot with those who are coarsening public discourse and engaging in superficiality. I’m sometimes told that the term is clearly just a means for venting hate, and makes me no different from the average Kos blogger who sees Republican politicans and corporate executives and evil, greedy or stupid.
Here’s the difference. The term “freedom-hater” is quite specific in what it characterizes. Here at BN it gets applied to those who would limit individuals’ choices in the free market, try to set up moral equivalency between Western nation-states and its enemies, and use the courts to legislate. If asked to do so, I can provide substantiation for my application of it to any person. I hope there’s nothing unclear about why TCM, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, The H-word Creature, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, George Soros, the editorial board of the New York Times, Greenpeace, ACORN, La Raza, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez and the Iranian mullahs fit this label. They are all on record as having advocating the curtailing of freedom in one of the three ways enumerated above.
I carefully thought about this term before starting to use it some time ago – its cadence, its accuracy, whether or not it encompasses all I felt it needed to encompass, whether it reflected marurity on my part of not. I decided it was spot-on and have no qualms about using it frequently.
After all, on this 233rd Independence Day, it’s questionable whether the first nation to be founded on the idea of freedom still exists. And that’s because those who hate freedom have mainstreamed their way into the highest echelons of power.
