Modern-day language plays dangerous games with mankind

A week ago Pope Benedict XVI was in Brazil reaffirming the same crucial message he stressed on the eve of his election to the papacy in April 2005. At that time the Pope spoke of an insidious trend that is threatening society. "We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires." The Pope’s comments, which allude to man’s increasing rejection of God and of absolute truth, are becoming more pressing and deserve further reflection.

It is clear that the principal players generally responsible for building and maintaining this dictatorship are politicians and mass media. One of their main reinforcement mechanisms involves perpetuating inconsistencies in civil law and practice. One such example of a gross inconsistency has to do with the killing of a mother who is carrying a child. In certain instances the murderer is charged with the death of two human beings - both mother and child. However, if a woman exercises her so-called reproductive rights and has an abortion, the law clearly determines that no crime of murder has been committed. Thus a human life is inconsistently seen through the eyes of the law as being both precious and simultaneously expendable without value.

In addition to this inconsistency, another approach used by those who would dictate relativism to the rest of us consists of linguistic re-definitions, euphemisms, and other anomalies. Language, as the philosopher Heidegger said is the "house of being". If our language is contorted and deconstructed beyond fixed meanings then the being housed by language becomes indeterminate.

Today, our society speaks of openness and tolerance as supreme virtues. But to be open in such a manner means precisely to be closed to the objective truth. If one were to claim the existence of objective truth one would be labeled by society as being closed and arrogant rather than as open and tolerant. So go the language games. This euphemistic approach is perhaps best captured by the words "late-term abortion". This phrase covers up the fact that a partially born human is brutally murdered in the process of being born. ...........