A plastic word is a “concept” without any meaning meant usually to deceive by Jim ODonnell
(libertarian)
Friday, December 28, 2007
I remember a political analysis done on the CBC [Canadian Broadcast Corp] way, way back in the 1980’s, sorry but I can’t remember the participants or its title but that is not important. The major point being made was that political words are often meant to deceive and therefore only contain an emotional content and not any real content. One of the participants used the term "plastic words," and I like this term a lot so that is what I shall call them. Since there are hundreds of these type of plastic words I will concentrate on just two to demonstrate how plastic words are meant to fool you.
Change: This words is a fine verb and is very useful. I changed the TV channel. When used as a noun it is most often a "plastic word."
He is a "change agent," or things always "change," or he is for "change."
Oh, goodie-goodie-gumdrop he is for change. Change from what to what? Nothing is usually ever explained, just that there will be change. Well I can think of two instances of a change: one where you have a pick-ax buried into your head by someone and another where Ron Paul changes the government to work under the constitution as intended from the current mess.
Seems to me that these are both changes with entirely different outcomes. You will notice in the current campaign for President that the big "change agent" is Barrack Obama closely followed by Hillary Clinton. You betcha. As soon as I hear that some candidate is for "change" I immediately hit the mute button on my remote. So this word "change" is a big time plastic word.
The most used plastic word is "democracy." Because this word has an almost universal "good" emotional content [undeserved] it is used all the time to fool you and actually mean nothing. George W Bush uses it all the time when he probably doesn’t even know the actual definition of the term in the first place.
Democracy means, to keep things brief, the political rule of the majority.
As best I can tell it was a concept developed in ancient Greece and actually referred to their concept of an "ideal political" system. If you want to see just how ideal it was in practice just Google up "Socrates" or click here: Socrates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. You will find that the "Democracy" of Athens voted a sentence of death for his ideas, and good ol’ Socrates even went along with the idea, since he was a man of principle.
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America hated the term democracy, so much so that it is never mentioned, not even once, in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution for the United States of America. No the word is not used even once in these founding documents. In addition, in military training manuals as recently as 1910 when describing different political systems they said something like this, "A barbarous political system of majority rule which does not recognize the rights of the minority."
Well you will never hear Dr Ron Paul saying that he is for "change" and that he wants to be the President of our Democracy. Yes he will make actual changes which he has detailed at length.
And yes he wants to be the President of our Constitutional Republic.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 11
thumbs so far
The views expressed
in this article are those of Jim ODonnell only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
Jim ODonnell is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Want to comment on
this article? Leave your comment
here. Your email address is required to track your
comment. However, we will neither publish your email
address nor distribute it to other organizations or
persons. The only reason we might use it would be if
we needed to contact you regarding your comment. All
comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
