GIVE

There is a subtle misuse of language that has been bothering me a lot lately. Recently the just-nominated Barack Obama used it again when he spoke about (paraphrasing) "the old disproven conservative doctrine that if you give more to the richest, wealth in turn will trickle down to everyone else.” I hear it again when Canada’s Liberal Leader Stephan Dion talks about how our current conservative government is giving the wealthiest Canadians billions of dollars in tax breaks – rewarding the members of society who need it the least.

Sigh. Politics...

My problem is with the use of the word ‘give’. I don’t have a dictionary handy, but let me try to feel this definition out myself. To give means to effectively pass ownership of something to another party. It is of course implied that the first party must have ownership of that thing in order to pass it on to that second party. Simple right? I can’t give something to you that belongs to someone else, and I certainly can’t give you something that is already yours.

Yet when the government reduces taxation on a certain group of people- why is that the same as ‘giving’ them money? Doesn’t that just mean that they are stealing less of the money that they earned honestly and fairly? If some guy breaks into your house and steals your laptop, television and DVD collection, but he lets you keep your jewellery – did he effectively ‘give’ you that jewellery? According to liberal linguistics he did. According to liberals the thief just gave you jewellery that could have been used for the common good. Apparently you weren't that needy, after all you're the type of guy who can afford jewellery in the first place!

This goes beyond the government's Robin Hood mentality of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. I mean even Robin Hood admitted that he was stealing. Now the language has flipped so that if Robin Hood doesn’t clean you out completely for the good of the granola munching twits in Sherwood Forest he’s effectively ‘giving’ you the stuff he didn’t steal. So does that mean we have so say thanks?

Thanks for stealing my car, but not burning my house down.
Thanks for kicking me in the stomach instead of the crotch.

This is a frightening perversion of the word 'give' to mean something completely foreign to what it really means. We have to be vigilant on this use of language because it becomes accepted by the public so quickly. The fight for your personal liberty needs to be fought on an intellectual level first.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on other ways our language is being distorted.

- Bromby