This is typical of Gad; clever wordplay, snotty intellectual conceit (hat tip: Scratch), and utter intellectual vacuousness. Of course, this wasn't meant to be serious, just a cursory attack upon things at the deep end of the pool. I'll only respond to a few of the intelligible points (which won't take long) and move on, as there's nothing to see here.
My article:
The next generation knows only the altered meaning of terms, and tends to assume that those terms describe real things — when in fact they may not be descriptive at all, but prescriptive.
Gay to refer to a male homosexual. We may hyphenate the class names of various groups of our fellow citizens into African American, Mexican American, Latin American, Asian American, and even European American
Gad:
One of course wonders how the term "African American" is less technically descriptive of American citizens of an African heritage, how labeling them "Blacks", "coons", or "N...", as they traditionally have been, would be anymore scientifically accurate. And granting this, one further wonders if the agenda for political correctness is actually the opposite of what Blood describes as,
Its not technically descriptive of American Blacks who have lived here for centuries for the same reason "European American" is not descriptive of me. Out of the deep end of the pool Gad, you're swimming at your own risk.
And just for the road, probably 95% of the use of the term "nigger" that I've heard in the last 20 years has come from Black people themselves, and most of that from the Black popular culture, especially the Rap and Hip Hop music genres.
And please, no horseplay in the pool area...
My brilliant, incisive article:
What we have come to call political correctness is a standard term for what is really the politicization of language such that what appears to be only descriptive carries implied prescriptive weight
Gad:
to really be dropping labels that have become prescriptive, often in a bad way, and opting for descriptive ones like "African-American". But there's more, hilariously more, to be honest. Because after his repititious sermons on description and prescription, he pulls a stunning reversal, quoting Jeffrey Holland,
Again, "African American" is a
political term that carries covert ideological subtexts, not a description of indigenous Black Americans, who have no more connection to Africa than I do to medieval England.
Our words, like our deeds, should be filled with faith and hope and charity, the three great Christian imperatives so desperately needed in the world today. With such words, spoken under the influence of the Spirit, tears can be dried, hearts can be healed, lives can be elevated, hope can return, confidence can prevail.
Gad now attacks Elder Holland:
So it turns out, shockingly, that Blood is really no fan of description at all, in fact, for Blood, the entire language of the human species should be loaded with veneration for the Mormon God.
The froth begins to fly...
And the little qualifier he places after that quote is tough to take seriously when he explicitly uses the devil's tactic of prescriptive language himself, referring to his Mormon community as "Zion"(the good city), and that which lay outside of Zion as "Babylon"(the bad city). Deficiencies in his opposition are "sins" and so on. Political correctness, then, isn't wrong for making judgment calls, but for making judgment calls not suited to his prejudices which polarize the world into Latter-Day Saints and vile sinners.
And I thought I had a chemical dependency problem.
Satan wants to label us all as sick, diseased, disordered, or, in some other fashion, inherently less than or alien to the eternal son or daughter of God that we really are.
Oh yeah, calling a person sick is agenda driven, but referring to a person as an eternal son of God is a textbook example of descriptive objectivity.
Yes, Satan has an agenda, as do some persons and philosophies, in labeling us as "sick', "dysfunctional", and "diseased". I'm not at all sure how labeling all of us as eternal sons and daughters of God is driven by an agenda. Its a religious belief that you can take or leave at your leisure. If there is an agenda, it is to persuade you that it is true, but this, of course, you can...take or leave at your leisure.
As you can Satan's labels...if you will.
Quote:
When we domesticate unrighteousness, we morally neutralize it.
Note: Morally neutralizing a term also makes it descriptive.
Amazing. Gad has one lucid moment in the midst of this foam flecked comedic rant and actually makes an intellectually substantive statement.
Exactly my point, which, if Gad had actually read the article sober, he would have seen was one of the primary claims I was trying to substantiate. Morally neutralizing the term "fornication" by reframing it as "cohabitation" makes it strictly descriptive. Precisely my point. Continue the detoxification process...
Another humorous blind spot in Blood's project is that anti-Mormon literature is filled with exactly the same fanatical accusations of demonic language possession that Blood sees in liberal politics, a quick Google turned up this book,
Quote:
Mormons Answered Verse by Verse is ideal for such a moment. Organized for fast reference, it demonstrates why Mormon teachings have led more than 8 million people into a system of beliefs that bears only a surface likeness to Christian faith.
David Reed and former Mormon leader John Farkas comment on passages from the Book of Mormon and the Bible to show how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints redefines words to hide a man-centered, polytheistic theology.
The only thing humorous about this is that it has no logical or analogical relevance to anything I wrote or the arguments I used. "PC" and its association with the cultural Left is as well understood and substantiated a social phenomenon as any in modern political and cultural history. What "demonic language possession" is I haven't the slightest idea.
Aside from the hypocrisy,
Such as? You've demonstrated none such as of yet. Of course, to do that, you'd have to at least be coherent.
Blood doesn't really make a case for how terms like African-American and Ms. work their darkness on human minds, his poster child is predictably, homosexuality:
Hmmm, I quite remember, without looking at the article, homosexuality, heterosexual fornication and adultery, hyphenated names for minorities, and a few other assorted form of language politicization (such as the alwasy quaint "animal companion").
Me:
Quote:
We should, of course, always refrain from kneejerk or arbitrary discrimination against anyone in the sense of denying others the same unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we enjoy. However, should homosexuals be allowed to marry, and substantively alter the core meaning and purpose of the concept of marriage? Should they be Boy Scout leaders?
Sorry for yet another reversal, but I can't help but observe Blood's cart nearly overrunning his Tapir. In the one place he tries to link the redefinition of words with real-live evil in the world, he done up and does it in reverse! Where he should be arguing something along the lines that calling homosexuals "gay" furthers their agenda to life, liberty and the pursuit...er,
Can't help lapsing into standard leftist boilerplate yourself can you Gad, which helps to prove my point of course, so please feel free to continue.
I mean, furthers their agenda to sin against the Mormon commandments, he argues that the act of union among homosexuals would change the meaning of the word "marriage"! Which is it?
I'm not following your argument here (but then, neither are you, so we're both in the same leaky boat for what its worth). The use of the term "Gay" as a description of "male homosexual" is a part of the overall homosexual rights movements desire to mainstream its culture and mores in American society. That allowing the term "marriage" to apply to homosexuals would drastically alter its meaning and implications for the culture as a whole is obvious. What may not be obvious to you is that the desire to do so and the effect this would be expected to have can be shown from the words written and spoken within that movement for quite sometime. I don't see any secrets being kept here. Normally, this goes under the rubric of "reimagining" or "rethinking" gender and gender roles. Postmoderns as well as eclectic cultural Marxists also might use the term "transformative" to denote mass societal changes regarding gender roles and sexual norms.
How is it contradictory to argue that the homosexual rights movement's agenda is to further its own interests and at the same time point out that redefining the concept of marriage--furthers its own interests?
Are we worried that changing words will result in sin, or are we worried that sin threatens the sanctity of words?
In a philosophical, psychological, sociological, and spiritual sense, I think both are true. Sin always, in one manner or another, moves us away from not only moral integrity, but intellectual honesty.
One central problem with Blood's outlook is that language changes for a variety of reasons and will always be linked to cultural influence, there's no way to perfectly translate languages into each other, and there's no such thing as pure reference, even though pure reference turned out to be something he wasn't really looking for.
So Newspeak is "another language"?
Finally, everyone spins words to make their case, not just Satan. While homosexuals might have deliberately engineered "gay" with a positive spin, they've also (I believe) taken the negative word "queer" and turned it affectionate as some African-Americans do with the "N" word amongst each other.
Ahh, the left winged Hydra rases yet another ghastly head. So you see, there is a "good" use of the term "nigger" and a "bad" usage. Skin color is the demarcation line. Just as modern cultural Marxists make a distinction between the soft, benign slavery of ancient Africa, as opposed to the cold, cruel, uniquely evil European kind, Gad wants us to believe that "nigger" and "bitch" and "Hoe" and Motherf****r" are morally variable based on the political position occupied by the in-group using the terms.
Launching and controlling a full-scale attack on cultural change through word meanings is a little on the preposterous side.
Thank you Gad, for again demonstrating all of my major points. Translate the terms "cultural change" (or substitute "social change" or "social justice") out of PCspeak into standard English and you have "Launching and controlling a full-scale attack on leftist political, social, and economic transformation through word meanings is a little on the preposterous side.
What Gad has just demonstrated above is exactly why this needs to be done.
Oh, and I must apologize for calling Gad a "leftist". What I meant of course, was "progressive"...