Category: Culture

Commentary: The Language of Politics and the Politics of Language

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On his blog A Pilgrim in Narnia, Brenton Dickieson tells us that C.S. Lewis in his Studies in Words defined “verbicide” as the “murder of words.” Dickieson adds that “Lewis has some similar concerns as George Orwell in his ‘Politics and the English Language.’ Words can be politicized or bent into the service of those who are peddling products or ideas.”

The 21st century has given us a multitude of these vampires, who—having sucked the original meanings out of certain nouns and verbs—then use the carcasses to sell certain ideologies or to confuse the rest of us. Here is a partial list of these zombie words.

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REVIEW: New Book ‘Rise to Greatness’ Explores How a Kid from Queens Became One of History’s Most Influential Supreme Court Justices

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Antonin Scalia was a budding textualist long before he transformed the Supreme Court, and the nation, with his unique legal approach, a new biography of his early life reveals.

In the 1950s, the future Supreme Court Justice spent his mornings on the New York subway, commuting with his rifle to Xavier High School, a hybrid Jesuit-run Catholic school and military academy in Manhattan. His teacher’s response one day to a student’s sarcastic comment about “Hamlet” became a moment Scalia would never forget — and would refer to for the rest of his life as the Shakespeare Principle: “Mistah, when you read Shakespeah, Shakespeah’s not on trial; you ah,” Father Thomas Matthews said.

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Detransitioned Teen to Sue Doctors Over Puberty Blockers, Double Mastectomy

Susan Berry, PhD

A detransitioned 18-year-old girl has filed a letter of intent to sue a healthcare company and the doctors who gave her puberty-blockers, at age 12, and then removed her breasts a year later.

Layla Jane claims Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the Permanente Medical Group, and the doctors who treated her rushed her into transgender medical treatments without proper informed consent.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Once Vaunted as the Best in the Word, Stanford University’s Wayward Record is Growing Infamous

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Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.

That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.

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From Prisoner to Saint: The Unexpected Path of Ireland’s Best-Known Missionary

Christina Botteri

Saint Patrick’s Day is here, and so it goes we join millions across the globe to don our best green garb and imbibe in a panoply beverages from the unnaturally verdant Shamrock Shake to the local pub’s green draft – all in a joyous tradition to cheer one another in the name of a spiritual hero of Ireland.

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Dr. Mark McDonald Tells Parents What They Need to Do to Save Their Children from Government Schools

Susan Berry, PhD

Los Angeles-based psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald said “America’s schools are broken” beyond repair and have now become “dangerous” centers of leftist indoctrination – a problem parents must solve by changing their lifestyles, if necessary, to save their children.

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Nonbinary Pronouns Nonhelpful on Job Resumes: Study

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The number of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary (LGBTQ+) continues to increase. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans identifying as something other than heterosexual has more than doubled in the space of a decade.

As the number of people identifying as non-heterosexual continues to increase, so too does the number of those using gender-neutral pronouns. Personal gender pronouns (PGPs), a rather recent phenomenon, are part of someone’s gender expression. They are commonly used by queer, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and transgender individuals, although an increasing number of straight Americans are also using them.

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Catholic Civil Rights Group Condemns State Legislation to Force Priests to Break Seal of Confession

Susan Berry, PhD

Bills in the states of Vermont, Delaware, and Washington would include in mandatory reporting laws information about child sexual abuse a priest learns during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a move the Catholic League states lacks sound reasoning.

Last week Catholic League President Bill Donohue warned the “seal of confession” is “under fire” in Vermont, noting the Catholic civil rights organization is once again “doing battle with lawmakers who want to violate” the priest-penitent privilege, mostly in legislation concerning the sexual abuse of minors.

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Experts: A Large Proportion of Children Pursuing Gender Transitions Are Actually Autistic

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Children with autism make up an outsized proportion of the transgender-identified population, and autism spectrum traits make them particularly vulnerable to thought patterns that can lead youth to pursue gender transitions, according to research and medical professionals.

Transgender individuals are about three to six times more likely to be autistic than non-transgender people, research shows; the connection between transgenderism and autism has been a subject of interest for researchers since at least 2010, and the Gender Development Identity Service at Tavistock, the world’s largest pediatric gender clinic, came under fire in recent years over allegations that as many as 97.5% of its gender patients had autism. Dr. Susan Bradley, a Canadian psychiatrist and pioneer in treating gender dysphoria, told the DCNF that she now believes most pediatric gender patients are actually on the autism spectrum and are being exploited by medical professionals.

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Parents Organization Reports Nearly 6,000 U.S. Public Schools Support Keeping Child’s Gender Identity Hidden from Parents

Susan Berry, PhD

A Parents Defending Education (PDE) report revealed that 5,904 government schools in the United States maintain transgender or “gender nonconforming” policies that openly assert school staff can or should keep a child’s preferred gender identity hidden from parents.

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