Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”

This 1945 essay by George Orwell, most famously the author of the novels 1984 and Animal Farm, has been read and revered in university classrooms, as well as in writing programs, very near as long as it has been in print.  Today, in the year 2013, our world is under 196 flags and twenty-four time zones.  Orwell’s essay is as essential toward clarity in the speaking and writing of the English language today as it has ever been in both a political and economic sense.  –SB

[Please note that I’ve added bold text where needed to highlight Orwell’s key passages.  This allows for a quick read of his main thesis, but also allows the reader to then read the entire post, knowing, while doing so, Orwell’s meaning in his examples and expansions of thoughts.

Orwell, when he wrote this essay fifty-eight years ago, wrote extremely long paragraphs, as was acceptable then, when readers had the patience to read through them carefully.  Perhaps it highlights Orwell’s message somewhat that today, in this age of emails, Facebook chats and tweets, people have less patience for reading lengthy passages.  So, I’ve taken the liberty to break up his long paragraphs, and I’ve indicated those breaks with the symbol “~.”

Finally, through the use of ellipses, I’ve redacted certain words and clauses, of least importance, again for ease on the patience of today’s readers.  It is my sincere hope that through reading and understanding this post, the reader will then take the next step of locating Orwell’s essay and reading it in its entirety.]

“Politics and the English Language” / George Orwell

. . . the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.  Our civilization is decadent and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. . . . any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light . . . Underneath this lies the half conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

. . . the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes:  it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.  But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form and so on indefinitely.  A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.  It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language.  It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.  The point is that the process is reversible.

~

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.  If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration . . . the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. . . .

. . . two qualities are common . . . The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.  The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.  This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. . . . the concrete melts into the abstract and . . . prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.

Dying metaphors.  A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image . . . a metaphor which is technically “dead” . . . has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. . . . in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. . . . and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying.

~

Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact.  For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it.  In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about . . .

Operators or verbal false limbs.  These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry.  Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds to, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc. etc.

~

The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs.  Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render.

~

In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). . . .

Pretentious diction.  Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.  Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being:  realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion.

~

Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanshauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance.  Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English.  Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.

~

The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing  (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation.  It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, nonfragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning.  The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless words.  In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.  Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader.  When one critic writes, “The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality,” while another writes, “The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness,” the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion.  If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way.

~

Many political words are similarly abused. . . . The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.  In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides.  It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it:  consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

~

Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.  That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.  Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive.  Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are:  class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort.  Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to

the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to

the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, not yet

favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to

them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels

the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities

exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity,

but that a considerable element of the unpredictable

must invariably be taken into account.

. . . The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations—race, battle, bread—dissolve into the vague phrase “success or failure in competitive activities.” . . . The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.  Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely.  The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life.  The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables:  eighteen of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek.  The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (“time and chance”) that could be called vague.  The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first.

~

Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. . . . This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. . . .

. . . modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer.  It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.  The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.  It is easier—even quicker, once you have the habit—to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.  If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious [pleasing or agreeable to the ear]. . . .

~

By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.  This is the significance of mixed metaphors.  The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image.  When these images clash—as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot—it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. . . . People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning—they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another—but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying.

~

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:  What am I trying to say?  What words will express it?  What image or idiom will make it clearer?  Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?  And he will probably ask himself two more:  Could I put it more shortly?  Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? . . . It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of languages becomes clear.

In our time, it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.  Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.”  Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.  The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech.

~

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy:  a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. . . .

~

A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine.  The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself.  If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church.  And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . political language has to consist largely of euphemism [a mild term for one considered offensive], question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. . . . Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism.  He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.”  Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism.  A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.  The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.  When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.  In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.”  All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.  When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. . . .

. . . if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.  A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.  The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient.  Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow.

~

Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. . . . This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases . . . can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

. . . the decadence of our language is probably curable.  Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions.   So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail.

~

Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority.  Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists.

~

There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job . . . to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and stayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. . . . The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

. . . [defense of the English language] has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a “standard English” which must never be departed from.  On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness.  It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a “good prose style.”

~

On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial.  Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning.  What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.  In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them.

~

When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it.  When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.

~

Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterward one can choose—not simply accept—the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person.  This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally.  But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails.  I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i)  Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii)  Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii)  If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv)  Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v)  Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi)  Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable.  One could keep all of them and still write bad English . . .

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. . . . one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.  If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. . . .

~

Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.  One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase . . . into the dustbin where it belongs.

[Please note that the first graphic is from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Fifth Edition (2011), and the remaining four graphics are from The World Almanac And Book Of Facts 2013 (2013)]

[Orwell’s text is from:  McCallum, John Hamilton., Ed.  Prose And Criticism.  New York:  Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966.]

Please also see:

A Spoonful Of Effort Helps Competent Grammar Go Down  (10 September 2013)

Rachel Jeantel and Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”  (28 June 2013)

Four maxims on habit formulation, or:  “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don’t mess with mister in-between”  11 January 2012

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On civil rights and equal justice: Glenn Beck’s June 19, 2013 speech in Washington, D.C.

theblaze.com  http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/we-will-no-longer-accept-the-lies-becks-prepared-remarks-for-washington-d-c-rally/

Politics

‘We Will No Longer Accept the Lies’:

[Glenn Beck’s Speech at Washington, D.C. Rally]

Jun. 19, 2013 11:19am

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is the CEO & Founder of Mercury Radio Arts.  Beck is one of America’s leading radio and television personalities, and author of #1 New York Times bestsellers in both fiction and non-fiction.  The Glenn Beck Program is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks and is the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54.  Glenn is married with four kids.

Editor’s note: Below are the prepared remarks for Glenn Beck’s speech in Washington, D.C., on June 19, 2013.  This post has been updated with more up-to-date text, though the delivered remarks may slightly differ.

–

Today, inside, they dedicated a new statue of another American giant, Fredrick Douglas – a man born into slavery, but who knew instinctively that he was not born a slave.  No man is.

To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century.  Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground.  Then beat and terrorize them.  After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do what ever it is the circus requires.

[Watch full speech here:  http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/we-will-no-longer-accept-the-lies-becks-prepared-remarks-for-washington-d-c-rally/]

Fredrick Douglas was lucky enough to live in a house where he was taught to read, write and think.  He knew God did not make men masters over others.  Nor did he ever intend any man to impose unrighteous dominion over another man or beast.

(Photo: TheBlaze)

It is time we remind ourselves of this truth again, and begin to rise up against the intimidation before the handful of peanuts from our new political circus masters is considered a kindness and not the symbol of evil cruelty.

In the building behind me, they are now excusing storing all data, phone calls, financial transactions, geotracking on every American for our “safety,” while allowing anyone to cross our borders either on foot or in underground tunnels without any worry or consequence.

They have not suspended or fired but promoted those at the IRS who rattled the chains of control to any group that disagreed with their policies.  And now, after pushing misery and death through the so-called “Arab Spring” in country after country, they are plotting a new war with Syria.  This will bring death and destruction the world over.  We are told that we need to pick sides and arm those who are so far down the scale of decency that even Vladimir Putin asked Americans if they knew that those we are arming have literally eaten their enemies on the battlefield.

The fact that he even needed to ask that question, and that most have never even seen the video of the commander of the rebel troops on TV engaging in this ungodly horror, is an indictment of our government officials and our media.

I am surrounded today by some modern-day spiritual giants.  All from different faiths, different backgrounds and many different views.  But we all have one thing in common.  We don’t recognize our country anymore and because we know that God is just, we tremble for our children’s future.

We wonder, are we even worth defending anymore?  If so, why?  Who are we?  And will we even notice or care when the chain is finally snapped around our legs?

What will be written about us?  The greatest generation has passed.  We are who historians will watch.

Will it be said that none called for justice not one pleaded for truth?  They trusted in vanity and spoke lies.  They conceived mischief and brought forth iniquity.

What is it we even believe as a people anymore?  Where did we get these ideas that now seem so popular?  Our forbears came to these shores not for free stuff, but for freedom.  The chance to make their own way, create a different life.  They came here because they knew that God made them free to make their own way in life, take the risk, do their best and take responsibility for their own lives.

They came here because they wanted to serve Him in the way they believed, not as they were told.

But how many care about our history?  And, of those who do care, how many really still believe?

Some things are worth believing in.  That the little guy can make it.  Every single life has value and is worth living.  That honor and integrity do matter.  That justice will prevail – if not in this life – then the next, and that God does exist.  And what we do in our lives matters.

It is the meek and the humble that inherit the earth.  Have we forgotten?

We have declared ourselves masters of the earth — spread our troops all over the world, taught the world how to do banking like we do it here in America.  Even though we can’t even master our own homes, protect our neighborhoods, or simply balance a check book.  How grotesque and garish we must appear to those looking in.

I, for one, still believe in the silly notion of truth, justice and the American way.

Since our founding, a good percentage of our fellow citizens closed their eyes to the civil rights of all Americans.  “I’m okay.  I don’t want to think of the bad things going on. I am busy.  It doesn’t affect me.  It can’t be that bad and even if it is, I am just one person and what can I do about it anyway?”

Nothing has changed, except the chairs at the table.

Someone has always been on the losing end of the stick of power.  Blacks are the most obvious, the Chinese, the Native Americans, but let’s not forget the Irish, the Catholics, the Mormons, the Jews, and now it seems all those of faith that will not conform.

For those that think men make progress collectively:  I warn you, history teaches that you couldn’t be more wrong.  We are redeemed one man at a time.  There is no “family pass” ticket or park hopping pass to life.  One ticket, one life at a time.

Man doesn’t vanquish hatred or bigotry.  The target keeps moving.  From the blacks to the Irish.  Atheists to Christians.

But as always, there are a few leaders:  Ben Franklin, John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  They know that the march toward freedom never ends; man must be ever-vigilant and pray less with his lips and more with his legs.

They never forget that truth, justice, and freedom are the wellspring from which the waters of man’s civil rights come.  And so they must be upheld for all men – those you know, those you do not, and maybe more importantly — they must be upheld for those who you do know but do not like or agree with at all.  If they are lost for one, in the end they are lost for all.

In the past, these historic stands which we now call civil rights movements were done by a small but dedicated portion of our citizens which led to great shifts in our culture.  But those movements always came from the same institutions … the church.  And usually not the church with the popular preacher, but the one who put it on the line to tell the people the truth.

Preachers like these men, who know that we are all born free, but that freedom comes at a great price — a profound responsibility to stand against injustice, hatred and bigotry.  Our pulpits have gone quiet out of arrogance, fear and apathy.  Their faith is found in the wisdom of man and not in the power of God.  For some, losing tithing checks or the gold Rolex watch has become more important than losing man’s freedom.

Whatever the reason, too many are no longer willing to call evil by its name.  There is no vision.  And when there is no vision, the people perish.

I humbly suggest to you that Martin Luther King knew the answer, and he lost more than congregants during his long march.  Students are taught that his vision came from the ideas of Gandhi.  Maybe a new radical 20th century progressive philospher was the one that taught MLK that “although we be free of all men, when we choose to make ourselves servants to all, we gain the more.”

Let’s get a couple of things straight. What MLK and Gandhi did was not progressive or new.  It was an ancient idea.  Hollywood, Woodstock, nor the hippie culture was the source of power of the 1960s freedom movement.

God was.

He was leading those who risked their lives over that bridge in Selma, not Janice Joplin, Columbia University, or a labor union.  It wasn’t John Lennon that taught people about love and peaceful resistance — that job fell on the shoulders of a Jewish carpenter.  And it is there that we will find the answers that will break the chains that are being forged for a new generation of slaves.

The rights that so many Americans ignorantly preach about so often are not really their rights.  They belong to God and they are given to us for stewardship.  They are pretty important and obvious.  So obvious that we used to say they were “self-evident,” meaning that humans don’t need to be taught; you instinctively know that you have a right not to be executed without a trial, held without charge, searched without warrant or spied upon without cause.

The government is no longer the protector of those civil rights, and so we must be.  When we are told that it is okay for the IRS, EPA, ATF, FBI or anyone to hassle, threaten or intimidate others because of their skin color, religion or political belief, we stop being the country that we all want to build, and start being the country the world should fear.

The long train of abuses regarding these rights are the same MLK marched against, and the very same our dusty founders warned us about losing.

Men may make progress, but man never changes.  Man loves power and money.  No matter the skin color, religion or income level.  These symbols of our nation make men drunk with power, who then justify their lust for more by claiming they are public servants.  The only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks.

We must sober up and admit that too many of the Republicans and the Democrats have played us, lied to us and stolen from us, while the getaway car was driven by the media.  A media that can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist.  Journalists print the things the powerful don’t want printed.  What they do is public relations.  Those PR firms will not print the truth about the average American who finds himself concerned with the direction of our country today.  So we must.

We are not violent.  We are not racist.  We are not anti immigrant.  We are not anti-government.  And we will not be silent anymore.

Those who wish to use unrighteous dominion over mankind are not enemies of ours; they are enemies of God, and He will not be silent much longer either.  We will no longer accept the lies, the corruption, or the information and data gathering.  It is evil.  And we come here today to send a message that we will surround all of those who wish to stand and break the cycle of corruption.  We will use ourselves as shields to protect those in the system, the elected officials or whistle blowers with the courage to stand.

We come here today to respectfully, but with the power of the spirit, demand to be treated as an equal member of society.  I am a man, and I will be treated as such.  I answer to only one king and His kingdom will come, His will be done. We have chosen sides and we choose God.  America as a nation must do the same, as well.

(Photo: TheBlaze)

We come today to declare our independence, to reaffirm our founding principles.  We, as a nation, acknowledge a creator.  We acknowledge that he gives certain natural, guaranteed rights to man.  We declare that government exists primarily to protect these natural, God-given rights.  He has established right and wrong.  He is just and therefore, man must pay for his mistakes either now on Earth, or through God’s justice later.

There is no such thing as social justice.  Only God can balance things out, and we are not God.  But honest and decent men can fight for and establish equal justice.

There is no such thing as collective salvation.  We, however, are going to be judged on how we treat our fellow brothers and sisters.  Thus we must serve them, help them with charity toward all.  “Malice toward none,” Lincoln said.  God said it slightly differently – vengeance is mine.

Anyone who speaks of punishing their political enemies in on the wrong side.  It is clearly evil and we have a responsibility to say so.

America:  it is now your time to rise up and boldly declare those same self-evident truths that changed the world, and demand that those truths remain the basis of our laws.

My civil rights will not be trampled, and I say this not for me but for my children, and all those who yearn to breathe free.  Those who make your Apple products at Foxxcon, those who languish in prisons in Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.  Those homosexuals who are stoned to death in the streets of Egypt or Iran, while our so-called civil rights leaders hold coffee klatches with third graders in the White House.

We will stand not for our job, house or income, but we will stand for those immigrants who came here the right way, and not have their dreams destroyed by increasing competition at the lowest rung of the ladder while keeping the brightest and best minds out of the visa pool allowing for little competition at the top.

We will not pervert women’s rights and twist it into a gross silent defense of abortion doctors in Philly and Houston while turning our eyes from the forgotten women who have never had the civil right to walk alone on a street without a man, or to drive a car in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, and even those who now cower in fear with their faces covered in states like Florida, Virginia, New York and Minnesota.

We will not waste another second shadow boxing the demons of the past when the fight to end actual slavery is still happening today.  Call it what you will, but those who make your iPad in China – those who make your cute little Mao purses – are the very people you claim to care so much about.  They are the ones yearning to breathe free.  And worse, there is the oldest form of human degradation man has ever known, the sex slave trade that currently has in its coils over 2 million children.  The biggest source of this evil is a wide open hole in our Arizona border.

We beg the American people to wake up and help the 8-year-old children being sold into sex slavery.  The press may say, ‘How dare these men declare themselves the next Martin Luther King or civil rights leaders?’

How blind to believe the civil rights movement ever ended.  The civil rights movement never ends, and it never will.  It has been marching since the beginning of time.  Where Martin Luther King started is where Gandhi left off, and where he started, Abe Lincoln left off, and before that Whitfield all the way back to Moses.  God has not moved.  We have.  But it is never too late.  We are not at the mercy of these events.  We can alter the course of history.  We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story.  But we need people who are willing to speak truth.

(Photo: TheBlaze)

The last century was a century of genocide. A century where collectivist, national socialist, and communist evil rose up again and again… swallowing up the lives of millions.  It happens every time man says the collective is more important than the right of the individual.  That one phrase becomes in the end – every time – a license to kill anyone deemed to be standing in the way of progress.

But evil met its match.  Goodness eventually prevailed.  People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Lech Walesa and Mother Theresa awoke the world.  They gave their lives to the pursuit of human rights.  They took the side of justice against injustice; they held aloft the torch of freedom to push out the darkness of hate.

These men and women lived difficult lives.  They often lived shortened lives.  They were often born to relative privilege, but willing to take on suffering.  They did want not to martyr themselves.  They would have happily lived to the end of their natural lives in comfort… but to the righteous, there is no comfort when evil has taken root.

But the cause of human rights has been taken over by organizations who share little with the individuals who led the movement.  Human rights was once a cry for justice.  Now it used as a threat.  These organizations have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent.  They criticize free nations and spare the unfree.  They denounce nations like Israel and America, who have high standards for freedom, and leave alone nations that have no freedom at all.  They are nearly comical in their double-standards.

They are no more than the enforcers or the attack dogs of those who wish to keep men confined in spaces they design.  Whatever moral force they once had is spent.  Their time is up.  And so, we dismiss them.  Today we take back the phrase “human rights” and place it where it belongs, as the first half of God’s plan for humanity.  The second half is responsibility.

If we want to be endowed with rights – real human rights, we have to act with responsibility.  We must not be comfortable with rights.  We must be comfortable with responsibility.

Who will protect your rights better?  A king, president or you?

Who will protect the truth?  A reporter, a labor union or you?

Who will protect and teach your children to seek truth?  A textbook committee, an education bureaucrat, or you?

Did a commission of wise men stop the Holocaust?  Did a committee of Congress end Jim Crow?

No.  In each case, the work was done by individuals who would not abide convenient lies.

They saw injustice and they called it out.  They saw their nation wage war against a single group and they said “not in my name.”  They didn’t wait for the conventions of society to catch up to God’s laws.  They pushed.  They pressed.  And they were victorious.

(Photo: TheBlaze)

Each of us have been waiting for a leader to rise from among us.  And none have.  How many have been called and refused to serve?  How many must have failed to heed the call for the Lord to make it all the way down to us?

I pray now that those who have heard the call to rise up in the tradition of peaceful resistance do so now before, as it was with Bonhoeffer, it is too late.  I beg those with eyes and ears to heed the call and begin to train under the exact system used by MLK.  Search his words out.  You will find that your history professors and civil rights activists left out the real author of the words of Gandhi, King and Bonhoeffer.

Read them, ponder them, and risk living them.  Even though they will make you a target of the NSA, having your name on their list as an enemy may in the end be the way your name is forever etched in his book of life.

Pastors, priests and rabbis:  I challenge you.  What have you done with your knowledge and priesthood power that those without have not done this week?  If you cannot answer that with power every day, what does that say about you?

Average citizens and college students:  I challenge you.  Martin Luther King didn’t take a class, get a certificate and a bunch of permits.  He saw injustice, studied eternal truths, exercised discipline and marched.

If you don’t find a leader, perhaps it is because you were meant to lead.

Christians:  I believe in the free market.  If your preacher is too afraid to preach it from the pulpit, maybe you should preach it from the street corner.  Many are called.  Will you answer?

Our spiritual body is out of shape and we need intensive training right now.

Get back to God, and know that some things are true and worth believing in.  The good guys do win in the end.  Evil does not stand unless good men never rise up.  The time is now and we are the people the world is waiting for.  We must never stop being the shore that others can come to for shelter and hope.

But to do so we must realign ourselves with truth and rise up and stand.  This is the vision.  We must preach good tidings to the meek, bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to those held captive.  To declare vengeance belongs to God and God alone.  We must give unto those who mourn — beauty for ashes and water the trees of righteousness.  We shall not perish.

I can’t help that most of us don’t like to hear the truth, but hear it we must:  George Washington told us religion and morality are the only stable and lasting basis of individual life and public policy.  If we are to survive, they must be part of our public policy rather than driven from it.

It is no longer enough to just be a good person.  We must work to be the next Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King.  It is noble to strive to be the size of the bronze giant they dedicated this morning in the building behind me.  Fredrick Douglas’ time was in the 1800; King’s time has passed.  This is our time.  This is the next long
march toward civil rights and we shall overcome.

Stand without fear, lock arms and stare down the bullies that wish to enslave mankind yet again.

Honor, courage and love are what is required, and they are contagious.  Spread the word and proclaim liberty throughout the land.

“Let us, today, raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.”

DRONE! In 3D surround sound (and odorama?)

From:  TheBlaze.com:

Expanding Drone Legislation ‘Raising an Alarm With the American Public’

• Posted on June 19, 2012 at 11:12pm by Liz Klimas
• http://www.theblaze.com/stories/expanding-drone-legislation-raising-an-alarm-with-the-american-public/

(Image: Wikimedia)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of drones patrolling U.S. skies?

Predictions that multitudes of unmanned aircraft could be flying here within a decade are raising the specter of a “surveillance society” in which no home or backyard would be off limits to prying eyes overhead.  Law enforcement, oil companies, farmers, real estate agents and many others have seen the technology that was pioneered on battlefields, and they are eager to put it to use.

It’s not just talk:  The government is in the early stages of devising rules for the unmanned aircraft.

So far, civilian use of drones is fairly limited.  The Federal Aviation Administration had issued fewer than 300 permits for drones by the end of last year.

(Related: Where are the 63 drone sites approved by the FAA in the U.S.)

Public worries about drones began mostly on the political margins, but there are signs that they’re going mainstream.

Jeff Landry, a freshman Republican congressman from Louisiana’s coastal bayou country, says constituents have stopped him while shopping at Walmart to talk about their concerns.

“There is a distrust amongst the people who have come and discussed this issue with me about our government,” Landry said.  “It’s raising an alarm with the American public.”

Fear that some drones may be armed, for example, has been fueled in part by a county sheriff’s office in Texas that used a homeland security grant to buy a $300,000, 50-pound ShadowHawk helicopter drone for its SWAT team.  The drone can be equipped with a 40mm grenade launcher and a 12-gauge shotgun.

Randy McDaniel, chief deputy with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, told The Associated Press earlier this year his office had no plans to arm the drone, but he left open the possibility the agency might decide to adapt the drone to fire tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.

Earlier this year Congress, under pressure from the Defense Department and drone manufacturers, ordered the FAA to give drones greater access to civilian airspace by 2015.  Besides the military, the mandate applies to drones operated by private companies or individuals and civilian government agencies, including federal, state and local law enforcement.

Below is a timeline created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation of drone integration in the United States. See the larger image here.

(Image: EFF.org)

The military, which is bringing home unmanned aircraft from Afghanistan, wants room to test and use them.

But the potential civilian market for drones may far eclipse military demand.  Power companies want them to monitor transmission lines.  Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which crops need water.  Ranchers want them to count cows. Journalists are exploring drones’ newsgathering potential.  Police departments want them to chase crooks, conduct search and rescue missions and catch speeders.

(Related: See other articles on the Blaze covering drone use by civilians and local law enforcement)

But concern is spreading.  Another GOP freshman, Rep. Austin Scott, said he first learned of the issue when someone shouted out a question about drones at a Republican Party meeting in his Georgia district two months ago.

When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, suggested during an interview on Washington radio station WTOP last month that drones be used by police since they’ve done such a good job on foreign battlefields, the political backlash was swift.  NetRightDaily complained:  “This seems like something a fascist would do. … McDonnell isn’t pro-Big Government, he is pro-HUGE Government.”

(Related: Drones over D.C.? Metro police chiefs grilled on UAVs, illegal immigrants, cops on cellphones — see how they respond)

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute of Charlottesville, Va., which provides legal assistance in support of civil liberties and conservative causes, warned the governor, “America is not a battlefield, and the citizens of this nation are not insurgents in need of vanquishing.”

Drone operators (Photo: Wikimedia)

There’s concern as well among liberal civil liberties advocates that government and private-sector drones will be used to gather information on Americans without their knowledge.  Giving drones greater access to U.S. skies moves the nation closer to “a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded and scrutinized by the authorities,” the American Civil Liberties Union declared in a report last December.

An ACLU lobbyist, Chris Calabrese, said that when he speaks to audiences about privacy issues, drones are what “everybody just perks up over.”

“People are interested in the technology, they are interested in the implications and they worry about being under surveillance from the skies,” he said.

The anxiety has spilled into Congress, where lawmakers from both parties have been meeting to discuss legislation that would broadly address the civil-liberty issues.  A Landry provision in a defense spending bill would prohibit information gathered by military drones without a warrant from being used as evidence in court.  A provision that Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., added to another bill would prohibit the Homeland Security Department from arming its drones, including ones used to patrol the border.

Scott and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have introduced identical bills to prohibit any government agency from using a drone to “gather evidence or other information pertaining to criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a regulation” without a warrant.

“I just don’t like the concept of drones flying over barbecues in New York to see whether you have a Big Gulp in your backyard or whether you are separating out your recyclables according to the city mandates,” Paul said in an interview, referring to a New York City ban on supersized soft drinks.

(Related: Cola Wars: Full-page ads in the New York Times challenge and mock Bloomberg’s sugary drink ban)

He acknowledged that was an “extreme example,” but he added:  “They might just say we’d be safer from muggings if we had constant surveillance crisscrossing the street all the time.  But then the question becomes, `What about jaywalking?  What about eating too many donuts?  What about putting mayonnaise on your hamburger?’  Where does it stop?”

Calabrese, the ACLU lobbyist, called Paul’s office as soon as he heard about the bill.

“I told them we think they are starting from the right place,” Calabrese said.  “You should need some kind of basis before you use a drone to spy on someone.”

In a Congress noted for its political polarization, legislation to check drone use has the potential to forge “a left-right consensus,” he said.  “It bothers us for a lot of the same reasons it bothers conservatives.”

The backlash has drone makers concerned.  The drone market is expected to nearly double over the next 10 years, from current worldwide expenditures of nearly $6 billion annually to more than $11 billion, with police departments accounting for a significant part of that growth.

“We go into this with every expectation that the laws governing public safety and personal privacy will not be administered any differently for (drones) than they are for any other law enforcement tool,” said Dan Elwell, vice president of the Aerospace Industries Association.

Discussion of the issue has been colored by exaggerated drone tales spread largely by conservative media and bloggers.

Scott said he was prompted to introduce his bill in part by news reports that the Environmental Protection Agency has been using drones to spy on cattle ranchers in Nebraska.  The agency has indeed been searching for illegal dumping of waste into streams, but it is doing it with piloted planes.

In another case, a forecast of 30,000 drones in U.S. skies by 2020 has been widely attributed to the FAA.  But FAA spokeswoman Brie Sachse said the agency has no idea where the figure came from.  It may be a mangled version of an aerospace industry forecast that there could be nearly 30,000 drones worldwide by 2018, with the United States accounting for half of them.

Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, co-chairs of a congressional privacy caucus, asked the FAA in April how it plans to protect privacy as it develops regulations for integrating drones into airspace now exclusively used by aircraft with human pilots.  There’s been no response so far, but Acting FAA Administrator Michael Huerta will probably be asked about it when he testifies at a Senate hearing Thursday.