When language becomes a threat to democratic values - opinion

Language is a useful and convenient tool to convey one’s thoughts, yet it is also a multi-edged sword, if such a thing exists, as words can be manipulated in multiple ways. Recently, there have been three examples of such manipulation, each very different from the other, yet each worthy of raising alarm bells in the mind of the listener.

This was Goldberg’s response: “I’ll just say this. It would be better for all elected officials, in the United States and Israel, to close their eyes, think about the very courageous men and women of the US and Israeli armed forces who put themselves in harm’s way together, side by side, aircraft wing to wing, to quite literally save the world a few months ago.

“Think about their sacrifice, their courage, their commitment to one another as allies, and ensure that in all of our dialogue and how we speak, how we conduct ourselves, that we try to reflect that same level of commitment to one another.”

Talk about not answering the question! The interviewer asked for an opinion about what the vice president had said, and the response was a philosophical mouthful about how we should all speak and conduct ourselves. Goldberg is an artist at not answering the question by changing the subject.

Sometimes, however, the words are the right words, but the listener’s biases rule.

The offense? At a local conference, he presented statistically substantiated and universally accepted data on mass migration, group differences in intelligence and achievement, crime statistics, and the failures of multiculturalism in a manner the court decided created an “us vs. them” atmosphere.

In a word, by Langenhove exercising his right of free speech that Belgium and other democracies tout as one of their inviolable principles afforded every citizen, his conveying of observable, verifiable reality itself became a criminal act for which he was found guilty. Not what he said, not for misrepresentation of the facts, but that relating the statistics alone was interpreted by the courts as a criminal act.

This kind of convoluted thinking by the courts set up to protect our human rights should send chills down the spine of anyone who still believes in the Enlightenment values of reason, evidence, and open debate. This is a “rabbit hole” that threatens civilization itself.

Lastly, there is the situation when the courts themselves choose not to listen to the words at all, and not even acknowledge that they have a bearing on the case.

However, there was a related issue presented in the arguments against the court’s decision that perhaps the administration’s decision to deport was motivated by anti-black and anti-Haitian prejudice that would, if true, violate the constitutional prohibitions against discriminatory government actions.

None of the statements the challengers cited by administration officials, including the president, “was overtly racial,” Justice Alito wrote on behalf of the court’s six Republican-appointed justices.

However, the three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Elena Kagan quoting extensively from Trump’s derogatory comments about Haitian immigrants. “The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” she wrote.

Kagan pointed out that during oral arguments in April, the court’s liberal justices pressed the administration’s lawyer about whether the decision to end the program for Haitians was racially motivated.

The justices cited the president’s false accusations during the 2024 presidential campaign that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, ate their neighbors’ pets and Trump’s comments in December about Haitian immigrants being undesirable because they come from a “filthy, dirty, disgusting” country.

In this case, the words were there; they were certainly derogatory and racially motivated, yet the court, whose responsibility is to protect those people from governmental overreach, chose neither to hear the words nor to let those words influence the majority decision, a position about which the three dissenting judges disagreed.

One could surmise from all three examples that it is better never to speak publicly, never to publish one’s thoughts, and stay out of the line of sight of those who may disagree with one’s position. That may indeed be a prudent decision, but doing so is how democracies die.

It’s not clear whether John Stuart Mill or Edmund Burke was the first person to effectively say: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. But the source is really unimportant. The message is clear that words, if used with the wrong intent, can sadly often be the vehicle that delivers negative results.

In these challenging times when the leadership often speaks about alternative truths, all of us need to be vigilant and respond vehemently when we see threats to our freedom in any shape or form.