Control over language easily morphs into control over thoughts and ideas.
As Nietzsche presciently observed over a hundred years ago: "All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside-down."
Political nomenclature has always tended to be value-laden. Start with the watershed movement known as "the Enlightenment." The term itself means coming into the light — i.e., gaining information and knowledge and thus advancing, first intellectually but not only that way. It also involves exercising one's intellectual power to better understand the world, to educate oneself and, on a macrocosmic level, help engender socio-political advancement through the use of scientific scrutiny. In other words, becoming enlightened is emerging from Plato's cave.
When the Enlightenment began in the eighteenth century, the shadows in the cave mistaken for reality were religious constructs and belief systems. Like everything else, they too must be subjected to intellectual rigor. As Kant noted in his Critique of Pure Reason, everything, including religion, must be analyzed through scientific and rational analysis. Whatever fails the rigorous test of intellectual scrutiny, including religion, must be cast aside as an anachronism, or worse.
The term "enlightenment" is thus charged with an intellectual force. Who indeed doesn't want to be enlightened? What person or what movement wants to be considered "ignorant," the opposite of "enlightened"?
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/the_valueladen_language_of_the_left.html
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