Language was developed in order to allow humans to communicate different concepts and express what they mean to others. Several tools such as categories have also been introduced to more effectively achieve this purpose. While these mechanisms were created to accomplish admirable goals, their use in the current day, especially on the modern university campus, has been antithetical to those goals. Language is now purposefully used to obscure and obfuscate one’s intentions. This phenomenon is most observable in more controversial subjects such as politics. Labels are thrown around in political discussions with many users having no idea of their actual meaning. And no, this is not just about name-calling between political opponents, when Democrats call Republicans fascist but cannot answer what a fascist is. This is more fundamental, this is what people call themselves though they have no idea of the meaning.
As someone who identifies as a conservative, it irks me to no end when people present themselves as conservatives but share no conservative principles. Instead, they are libertarians who vote Republican, which they mistakenly believe makes them conservative. An even more controversial example, especially to Cornellians, is the idea of Upstate New York and Westchester. While it is clear to many New Yorkers that Westchester is in Upstate New York, those from Westchester try to muddy the waters and draw the Upstate border above the county. While this example may be niche, insert your own region’s geographical dispute: What is considered part of the South, does Florida count, or how expansive is the Atlantic coast, does California count?
Murky language is more serious than geographical disputes or even properly labeling political ideologies. This was demonstrated last October after the terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel, which many around the country, including on this campus in particular, denoted as “resistance,” albeit with the caveat that targeting civilians is wrong. When people use the term resistance, they are not necessarily consciously calling for terrorist attacks like the one on Oct. 7. In good faith, it should probably be assumed that they are calling for revolt against what they interpret as a colonizing force, with revolt including military action against military targets. Yet those who call for resistance are oftentimes labeled as antisemitic because their calls are interpreted as general calls for violence against Jews in general. The crux of the problem is that while those in America including Cornell students and faculty mostly mean the phrase in a purely military-on-military manner, if they approve of violent resistance at all, some adopt the term resistance as cover to call for the mass murder of Jews.
This is nothing new: Whenever there is any movement, radicals will try to use the language of those in the center to cover their more disgraceful or sickening ends. A good example of this is the Civil Rights Movement, in which many of the leaders truly preached the message of equality. However, some tried to use the movement to push messages antithetical to the movement’s origins, such as Black Power.
While radicals trying to hijack the language of the center has always been true, a question that arises is why? One reason is the prizing of being moderate. In today’s society, in reaction to the general sense of insanity, moderation has become one of the most prized ideas in politics. Politicians are liked and disliked not on their ideas or values but on how moderate those ideas are. This may seem to many people good, who would want extremes, but extremes would probably be better. Moderation in politics is not good; it just suggests that the person has not thought through the logical conclusions of their ideas making them half-formed. When applied to actual government policy, there are consequences, while the politicians may not have thought through the consequences of their actions, those consequences will still occur.
Not only does the prizing of moderation lead to half-baked policy, but as stated previously, radicals still exist and they will co-opt the language of the moderates. This leads to the worst of both worlds because the radicals will try to secretly insert their ideas into moderate proposals, and language will suffer in general as well. There are only a finite number of meanings a word can have before it becomes worthless because there is no clear understanding. Words are meant to simplify expression and abet confusion. Moderation should not be prized. Instead, sticking to strong principles, even in adverse settings, should be admired and emulated.
Armand Chancellor is a third year student in the Brooks School of Public Policy. His fortnightly column The Rostrum focuses on the interaction of politics and culture at Cornell. He can be reached at [email protected].
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