Confessions Of A Cultural Reactionary

As there are ages of cultural renaissance and enlightenment, so are there, on the critical evidence of history, ages of cultural sterility and degeneration.

Today’s mass youth Rock/Rap culture, with its consecration of the trivial, the sexually perverse, and the infantile, is characterized by the debasement and corruption of language.

In his book, The Second Sin, Thomas Szasz observes:

To concepts like suicide, homicide, and genocide, we should add 'semanticide' – the murder of language. The deliberate (or quasi-deliberate) misuse of language through hidden metaphor and professional mystification breaks the basic contract between people, namely the tacit agreement on the proper use of words. Thus it is that the 'great' philosophers and politicians whose aim was to control man, from Rousseau to Stalin and Hitler, have preached and practiced semanticide; whereas those who have tried to set man free to be his own master, from Emerson to Kraus and Orwell, have preached and practiced respect for language.

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