Language is power
We go to dictionaries to settle disputes about the meanings of words. And yet, oddly, we didn't learn language from those dictionaries. We learned by observing use. When we challenge someone to look something up, we often don't ourselves know what we'll find there. We hope our own use is common, or at least supported.
We hope dictionaries will side with us because people consume and store thoughts as sentences, even when they don't know or agree precisely on the meanings of the words that make up such sentences. If you tell yourself “I am a good person” and I can convince you that “good” means “someone who washes their friend's cars,” maybe I can get you to wash my car—just because you want to be a “good” person.
If you can control language, you can direct its power. Sometimes it's harmless fun like that. Maybe I get a free car wash. Other times the stakes are higher, and it's more serious.
War of the Words
This jockeying for terminological control has become fully integrated into the societal conversations we call politics. When they can't change what's in someone's mind, well-funded political groups lately seem comfortable trying instead to change the meanings of the words others are holding onto so tightly.
“The pages of dictionaries are the battlegrounds upon which many modern wars are fought.”
That's me quoting myself. I make this observation a lot. I figured I should, at least once, put it on the record.
A glaring example is that the US Constitution creates certain supermajority requirements to change what the Constitution says. For a long time, those requirements have done their job. The Constitution seldom changes, and it requires a lot of people to agree when it does. But, in recent years, those who pretty clearly wish they could change our Constitution, yet can't muster the broad consensus to do it, seem focused instead on changing who interprets it.
Why change the words when it's easier to change the meanings of those words?
The ability to say what words mean is an enormous power, with huge implications. When we go assigning meaning to existing words, we need to keep in mind that we are not just creating new tools for future expression, we are also potentially affecting the meaning of existing beliefs that are expressed in terms of those words. Some see that as a sacred responsibility, others as opportunity—an invitation to power just waiting to be exploited.
The substance of rights
I once said to a friend that rights are just laws with a higher vote threshold for changing them. They looked at me in horror. “No!” they insisted, pushing back. “Rights are just there. That's why they're rights.” They are different than laws, they went on to explain. Not subject to edit or repeal. Inalienable, one might even say.
Philosophers have weighed in on this from a variety of points of view on rights. There are disagreements on how to conceive them that are broad and deep. And yet. And yet.
You can build all the fanciful rhetoric you want around them, to make them sound like they are vast and solid. But if someone is motivated, they will try to take them away because within those rights is the power to stop things, and there are people in the world who would rather not be stopped.
And those are sometimes very determined people. People willing even to ignore flowery rhetoric, if necessary. People who think what matters is power. The power to take those rights from you. The power over you that comes of denying those rights.
In other words, what rights we have seem doomed to perpetual attack. So we'd better be realistic about whether they are protected, and how.
Our societal prayers
Powerful as God is said to be, “rights” given by Him (or some say Her) seem to me most vulnerable. If we're going to use religious metaphors, perhaps prayer is better.
For those among us who are religious enough to think such prayers are regularly and reliably answered, this may be reassuring. And to those people, I wish all the very best, as I expect they may then find their faith severely challenged by such reliance.
For those of us who are not religious, prayer may still be a good metaphor. It underscores the need to see there's nothing backing such prayers that we do not arrange for.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” it is said, though precisely by whom seems subject of considerable question. True, nonetheless—provided such vigilance is active. Passive observership seems insufficient, exposing solid-sounding words as the paper-thin protection they really are. Only we, as the words' committed allies, can give such rights their rightful substance.
Life is a calm room,
hurricane raging outside,
paper walls between.
—Kent Pitman,
Tenuous Tenacity (June 2016)
Author’s Notes:
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The image generated with help from abacus.ai's ChatLLM (Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT Image 2.5 [Edit]), with post-processing in Gimp to resolve some image details and artifacts I had trouble explaining to the LLMs, and to reduce the resulting image in size for faster web download.
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