Raid on Reason

Now did you read the news today?
They say the danger's gone away
But I can see the fires still alight
They're burning into the night
--Genesis

As these pages have frequently noted, leftists love to manipulate language in their favor. They employ positive substitute symbols and euphemisms to advance their agendas.

Case in point. The recent invasion of Donald Trump's Florida residence is no longer a 'raid.' Instead, it is now being deemed as an execution of a search warrant.

The raid, plainly, is on reason.

Fake Capitalism

Drawn into the stream
Of undefined illusion
Those diamond dreams
They can't disguise the truth
--Level 42

A favorite rhetorical tool of progressives is the positive substitute symbol. Take a concept that people find distasteful, like socialism, and employ words representing concepts that this group views as positive, such as 'America' and 'capitalism,' and you might trick some minds.

Thus a Democratic candidate for president can write a piece proposing that he wants to save 'American capitalism' by instituting various socialist programs and not get laughed off the platform.

Capitalism involves free, unhampered markets of buyers and sellers engaged in voluntary exchange. Property is privately owned. Consumers, not producers, drive the system.

Any proposal that forcibly intervenes in some aspect of this peaceful system is not capitalism. It is fake capitalism. It is socialism.

Do not be fooled by propagandists trying to sneak a positive substitute symbol past you.

Spy Games

"What can I say? I'm a spy."
--Harry Tasker (True Lies)

When they face unpleasant situations, people on the left like to change the language associated with the problem to something that is friendlier to them. Governments don't spend. Rather, they 'invest.' Instead of global warming, it's 'climate change.' They are not illegal immigrants; they are 'dreamers.'

A popular one right now is that the Trump campaign was not spied upon. No, it was subject to 'unauthorized surveillance.'

I often wonder whether leftists truly believe that their use of positive substitute symbols, spin, propaganda, et al will actually alter viewpoints of others in their favor. Or whether these games are inwardly focused therapies to ease the pain of a collective psychosis.

Free Range Humans

"You think you're free? You're not."
--Nathan 'Diamond Dog' Jones (Con Air)

John Lott reminds us that, although many people believe that they are free, they're not.

So is the US still a free country? This is only a very partial list of things people can no longer do without gov approval. pic.twitter.com/cVQNynixDv

— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) January 5, 2019

Freedom has become a positive substitute symbol for government regulation and control.

Not a bad way to put it at the bottom of the graphic. Increasingly, we're living on a tax farm as free range humans.

Democracy and Propaganda

"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
--Dr Yen Lo (The Manchurian Candidate)

Ron Paul observes that propaganda has conditioned Americans to believe that democracy is associated with freedom and liberty. It isn't, of course. In fact the opposite is true. Democracy, defined as a process for making political decisions by force based on the desires of the voting majority, compromises the freedom of some for the benefit of others.

A favorite tool of propagandists is to manipulate language to create 'positive substitute symbols.' Take a word that people value in a positive manner (liberty), and gradually connect it to a new word (democracy) initially associated with a concept that people are prone to dislike (democracy = system of decision-making by majority force). With enough repetition, the negative connotation linked to the new word is likely to decline in favor of a positive connotation (democracy is a component of liberty).

Presto, the new word becomes cherished and people are berated for treating it in a negative light.

Perversely, then, if you don't support democracy today, then you are viewed as an enemy of freedom.

Outsourcing Crime to Government

Agent David Coppinger: Leary is what we nowadays call a wet boy.
Al D'Andrea: What's a wet boy, Frank?
Frank Horrigan: Leary's an assassin.
--In the Line of Fire

Some people hire agents to do criminal acts for them. A hit man commits murder. But that in no way absolves the principal who retained him.

Why, then, do the principals outsource crime? The criminal act may be sophisticated and require the skills of a specialist. The principal may not have the stomach for personally committing the crime. Or perhaps there is the hope that contracting with an agent will make it more difficult to trace the crime back to the principal.

Strong armed government agents commit crimes on the behalf of principals everyday. Theft, counterfeiting, kidnapping, slavery, murder. Does the same rationale listed above apply in this case? To some degree, yes.

Add another reason to the list, however. The reason is in actuality a rationalization. The rationalization is that when government uses aggression on others, it is not a crime at all. It is done in the name of national security. Or for the greater good. Or for [insert positive substitute symbol here].

Those who retain government agents to commit these acts see themselves as principals of good, not evil. They believe that they are absolved of any wrongdoing.

In reality they are outsourcing crime to government.

Fair Trade

It was thirty days around the Horn
The captain says it's thirty five more
The moon looks and the crew ain't stayin'
'There's gonna be some blood' is what they're sayin'
--Jay Ferguson

As we have noted in the past, Leftists often invoke the concept of 'fairness' when attempting to justify use of government force. Redistribution of income, for example, is often framed as a fairness issue.

But Leftists don't have a lock on fairness as a positive substitute symbol. When it suits their needs, people on the Right like appeal to people's sense of fairness as well.

For instance, President Trump has justified his tariff plan as necessary to foster 'fair trade.' Tariffs help 'even the playing field,' so the argument goes, against countries judged to be giving their firms an unfair leg up via subsidies and other mercantile programs.

Whenever political partisans from either end to the statist spectrum utter the term 'fairness,' take it as a euphemism or justification for use of government force to advance an agenda. When the Right promotes trade that is governed by discretionary rule, and it has a long history of doing so, it is a far thing from true fairness.

Legal Immigration

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul
In black and white
They really, really ought to know
--Tears For Fears

The left loves employing positive substitute symbols because of rhetoric's capacity to deceive. A current favorite is 'immigration.' People tend to have a natural affinity for the term because, by and large, their ancestors were immigrants. This is true for most people in most countries, as the history of man can be told as a story of migration.

We Americans are particularly fond of the immigrant term as it conjures recollection of our E pluribus unum founding and millions subsequently pouring out of ships at Ellis Island in search of better lives.

1882-S $1 Morgan PCGS MS67 CAC

The adjective that the left prefers to leave out of the American immigration narrative is 'legal.' Since the country's founding, laws have governed the admission of immigrants into the country. The American melting pot recipe has been one of legal immigration.

Leftists omit 'legal' from the immigration discussion out of political expedience. The millions of illegal immigrants currently residing in the US have been a source of votes. They also support a statist agenda grounded in globalism. Former President Obama's lawlessness with respect to enforcing immigration law exemplifies the left's position.

Because leftists know that they would have difficulty making their case to most Americans that illegal immigration is a fine thing for the country, they must restrict the narrative to immigration only. Then, the accusations fly. Those who support Trump's Wall or other methods of immigration law enforcement are painted as anti-immigrant. Or xenophobes. Or nativists.

If the name-calling grates on enough people, however, then the positive substitute symbol strategy could very well backfire. Americans are likely to become more conscious of the difference between legal and illegal immigration.

Not sure the left wants that to happen.

"We" Rhetoric

Too many shadows, whispering voices
Faces on posters, too many choices
If, when, why, what
How much have you got?
--Pet Shop Boys

Professor Higgs discusses the insidious use of "we" and other collective rhetoric in political discourse. The intention is to fool people into thinking that groups or institutions act monolithically. They do not. Only individuals act.

"We" rhetoric posits widespread agreement that rarely exists in a axiomatically diverse world.

As William Graham Sumner observed long ago, "we" often means "you" in the sense that you should support someone else's agenda--often couched in terms of some "greater good."

Used in this manner, "we" can be viewed as a positive substitute symbol employed by propagandists.

Higgs concludes, "Man, said Aristotle, is a political animal. A corollary of this proposition is that the political man is a fallacy monger who employs language to get what he wants at other people's expense."

Political Correctness

"You see, according to Cacteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Because I like to think. I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who would sit in the greasy spoon and think, 'Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the big rack of barbequed spare ribs with the side order of gravy fries?' I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter, and buckets of cheese, alright? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run around naked with green jello all over my body reading a Playboy magazine. Why? Because maybe I feel the need to, okay pal? I've seen the future. You know what it is? It's made by a 47 year old virgin in gray pajamas soaking in a bubble bath drinking a broccoli milkshake and thinking 'I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener.' You wanna live on top? You gotta live Cacteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other option: come down here, maybe starve to death."
--Edgar Friendly (Demolition Man)

Article proposes that political correctness is about control rather than politeness. Political correctness (PC) is defined as "the conscious, intentional manipulation of language intended to change the way people speak, write, think, feel, and act, in furtherance of an agenda." Use of positive substitute symbols is a common tool of those seeking to foster political correctness.

Political correctness can be considered propaganda. However, unlike other forms of propaganda, PC tends to be all-encompassing, seeking to mold individuals into submissive beings with no capacity for critical thinking. In a politically correct world, natural law is diverted and rerouted. Truth is not absolute, and can be bent to serve the purposes of those who manipulate language.

The author credits much of 19th century Austrian Edward Bernays with much of the basis of political correctness. Bernays was a press agent. He was employed by the Wilson administration to gin up popular support for US entry into WWI. He was also employed by the private sector to direct several successful advertising campaigns for consumer products such as Ivory soap and Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Central to Bernays approach was the exploitation of herd psychology in the "manufacturing of consent," a term used by British psychologist Wilfred Trotter in his work Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War published in 1919.

Herd instinct relates to concepts in social identity theory and involves deep seated desire to win the approval of social groups. Through the herding lens, the desire to fit in is seen as paramount and overwhelms most other human urges.

Bernays viewed herd instinct as volatile, irrational, and unpredictable. To control it, herd psychology must be steered by 'smarter people' in many small, imperceptible ways. Imperceptible because it is important that the people being herded do not realize that their thoughts are being influenced.

As such, Bernays employed techniques designed under the basis of several assumptions. One was that people are generally not creative and individualistic at heart. Instead, they are malleable and desperate to fit in with groups. He also understood the importance of third party authorities (e.g., athletes, actors, politicians, wealthy elites) to promote causes and products. People take their cues from positions of authority. Finally, he understood the role that emotion plays in tastes and preferences. It is not the substance of the political candidate or consumer product that we deem important, Bernays believed, but rather the emotional content that affects us.

Today, PC campaigns are designed with similar assumptions in mind. People who permit statists to frame debates and control narratives are likely to cede power over their lives.

Evolution of Liberal

Will you recognize me
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down
--Simple Minds

These pages have discussed the hijacking of the word 'liberal' by progressives (e.g., here, here, here). Nice analysis here by GMU econ prof Dan Klein of the evolution of the word using Google's ngram tool.

A simple ngram of 'liberal' reveals that usage of the word nearly quadrupled in the late 1700s. Klein links this pattern with the development of political and economic meanings of the word put forth by authors such as Locke and Smith. In this context, liberal was clearly associated with concepts of freedom and liberty.

The ngram then indicates that usage of the word liberal declined somewhat in the 1800s only to pick up again in the 1900s. Klein connects the second wave to the collectivist, statist movement which was becoming popular by the turn of the 20th century. Klein's 1894 quote of a Fabian socialist ("Laissez-faire individualist political philosophy is dead") helps capture the sentiment.

Because people still remembered what liberalism had been, progressives invented the term 'new liberalism' to reflect socialistic reform.

As memories of 'old liberalism' faded, progressives were able to clip the off the 'new.' And voila, liberal joined the stable of a positive substitute symbols that have become embedded in the American mind.

Theoretical Liberty

"Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."
--Benjamin Martin (The Patriot)

In this discussion of the Establishment's pushback against Rand Paul's efforts to force expiration of the Patriot Act's surveillance program, the author observes that "liberty is only theoretical to our political class."

Indeed, politicians generally use liberty as a positive substitute symbol for its opposite--despotism.

The author correctly concludes that "the political class benefits from the decay of liberty, not its growth."

Equal Opportunity

Drawn into the stream
Of undefined illusion
Those diamond dreams
They can't disguise the truth
--Level 42

A significant thread runs through these pages on the subject of equality. As observed by Hayek, equality assumes one of two competing notions in the social context.

One notion is equality of legal treatment. Rules should not grant legal privilege to any particular interest. Government does not have the right to limit what a person can achieve. The working principle is that no person or group should have the legal power to decide what another person's status should be. This principle must not be sacrificed to gratify a particular sense of social justice, envy, or resentment. All people must be treated equally under the law.

The other notion is equality of socioeconomic condition. Because the natural state of the world is variation and diversity, rules backed by force must be enacted to grant privilege to some people or groups in order to achieve sameness. This privilege legally authorizes government to limit what some people achieve, sometimes by confiscating property, in an attempt to advance the interests others (i.e., the privileged). These privileges help 'level the playing field' in some people's minds as it creates a sense of fairness.

Clearly, these two notions are diametrically opposed. Striving for equality of condition requires that people are treated unequally under the law. Rules grant legal power to decide a person's status, and force is authorized to limit what some people can achieve by stripping them of property and associated decision rights.

Some people might object to this dichotomous treatment of equality. There is also 'equality of opportunity,' they argue. Popular use of the term 'equal opportunity' dates at least as far back as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 where language related to equal opportunity is sprinkled throughout various sections of the act such as Title IV on public education and Title VII on employment. Institutionalization of the equal opportunity concept was enhanced by the formation of various commissions such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce various provisions of the act.

The general idea behind the equal opportunity concept is that all people should have an equal chance to compete within a given social framework. If people are born into low income family circumstances, for example, then that is deemed unfair. To equalize their opportunity versus those born into more favorable circumstances, then people born into more austere conditions should be given resources (money, education, special employment oversight, etc.) that helps them better compete in the marketplace.

It is easy to see that equality of opportunity is not a third, previously ignored concept of equality. Instead, it merely a repackaging (or positive substitute symbol) of the equality of condition concept. Rules must be tilted to grant some legal privilege over others. Resources must be taken from some for the benefit of others. Discrimination with respect to private property is forcibly restrained. Government has power to forcibly limit what some people can achieve. As observed by Tocqueville and others, liberty declines under such constructions of equality.

Like the equality of condition concept, the notion of equal opportunity necessitates unequal treatment under the law.

Fairness Folly

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."
--Morpheus (The Matrix)

The Judge observes that in his 'Teddy Roosevelt' speech a couple days ago in Kansas, President Obama sought to justify the heavy handed role of government, forcefully taking from some and giving to others, in the name of 'fairness.'

Fairness is a favorite positive substitute symbol for propogandists, as it evokes warm feelings from people while the underlying meaning of the word is gradually changed. Thus, spending is  said to be 'investing.' And mob rule is said to be 'democracy.'

Now, the president seeks to frame the taking of resources from people at the point of a gun (commonly defined as robbery) as 'fairness.'

As the Judge notes, it is the responsibility of government to treat all people fairly--a.k.a. equal treatment under the law, or the rule of law. This is Jefferson's 'all men are created equal' statement. All are naturally born to be treated equally under the law. None are born to be treated favorably.

What the president is espousing is unequal treatment under the law--a.k.a. discretionary rule or the rule of man. The rule of man is arbitrary, and subject to personal discretion. My definition of fairness may be different from yours. But if I am in power then I can force my definition of fairness on you.

Will the American people slurp the latest version of fairness blather down? History would suggest yes, as precedents go back to Teddy R himself. The numbers are also favorable, as the majority of people like to employ the concept of fairness to rationalize why they should be permitted to forcefully take liberty and property from minorities in the name of 'democracy.'

Like the Judge, I am hopeful that enough people are waking up to these thinly veiled attempts seeking to alienate us from our natural right to freedom.

Investing in Propaganda

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young but I'm just back-dated, yeah
--The Who

One characteristic of propaganda is that it often employs 'positive substitute symbols.' Let's say that you're the president of the United States, and that you want to increase spending on government programs.

Flatly stating that 'we need to spend more' could be a problem, however, because a large portion of the country (very much to your chagrin) has been catching on to the reality that government spending is thru the roof and that the nation already shoulders a crushing debt burden.

So you open your dog eared copy of Rhetoric for Government Propogandists in search of a word that could replace 'spending'-- one that would be more palatable to an increasingly austere citizenry. Let's see...ah yes, here it is: 'investing.' Investing connotes optimism and building for the future. By proposing investment programs rather than spending programs, then perhaps the public will be more prone to get behind your proposals.

Investing, therefore, becomes a positive substitute symbol for spending.

Let the spin begin.

Will it work? Politicians spew spin because they know that it often works. On the other hand, level of public engagement in political happenings has been increasing. Engagement means active minds.

And active minds are the propagandist's worst nightmare.

The Liberal Mind Trick

"No more training do you require. Already know you, that which you need."
--Yoda (Return of the Jedi)

Today, the term 'liberal' means something much different than it did prior to 1900. Classical liberalism concerns the freedom and sovereignty of the individual. The theoretical framework for classical liberalism was greatly advanced during the Enlightenment period by thinkers such as John Locke.

Classical liberalism formed the philosophical basis for the United States. It is clear from our founding documents that the founders were highly influenced by liberal thought. For example, Jefferson pretty much cut and pasted words from Locke into the Declaration.

The meaning of liberal was altered during the populist and progressive movements of the late 1800s/early 1900s. Some believe this was an effort by enemies of liberty to alter language in a manner that creates positive substitute symbols. Essentially the idea is to keep a word that has emotional meaning among the citizenry, but change its meaning. Over time, the theory goes, the people will embrace the new definition.

It's a form of propaganda, cookie, and consistent with the militant principle of creating chaos with language.

Job seemingly well done, as today's definition of liberal is about as far removed from the classic meaning as could be imagined. Today, a liberal is someone who favors the collective over the individual. Someone who believes that it is ok to impair liberty for some greater good--often in the name of 'social justice.'

Modern liberalism is full of inconsistency, irony, and paradox. Today's liberals profess peace and non-violence, but recruit the State, by far and away the most coercive force in the history of the world, as their primary agent for strong-arming their agendas on those who resist. Today's liberals claim to value diversity, but chat up democracy and 'one world' orders that ignore the innate variety of the human condition and suppress the desires of the few in favor of the many.

Classical liberalism stands for individuals pursuing their destinies in an uncertain world. Modern liberalism stands for forcing individuals into collective pursuit of stabilizing that uncertain world.

Mises (1949) understood that forced pursuit of such stabilization is impossible, and that it is destined to end in chaos.

Reference

Mises, L. 1949. Human action. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Words of Wonder

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far so fast
But somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
--Don Henley

A tactic for facilitating change away from capitalism and toward socialism, particularly it would seem by Fabian gradualists, is creating chaos with the language. Take old, valued words, change their meaning, but keep the old valued words.

Some of the words that have undergone metamorphosis include:

liberal
free markets
capitalism
democracy
justice
inflation
deflation

The idea is to get people to gradually accept new concepts while not alarming them. Rather than saying, 'Down with capitalism!' just say that we need 'managed capitalism' to keep people on board.

Creating positive substitute symbols...I think that's one term for it.