Friday, September 16, 2005

A Corruption of the Language

Fire of Liberty

Max Borders has a wonderful piece over at Tech Central Station that takes note of the fact that a great deal of people on the Left as well as certain factions of the Right seem to continue label the US as an Empire. The problem is that the word "Empire" has been so widely misquoted and wrongly applied by political hacks and what not. Aside from these folks we also find the word "Empire" appearing on various websites, newspapers, TV News, magazines and various other publications so often that the meaning of the world has been completely corrupted. Luckily, Borders has written a thorough argument on the true meaning of the word "Empire" and demonstrates why the folks who continue to argue that this nation has become an "Empire" are completely wrong. I think Borders put it best when he noted:
You can bet that any variant of the Empirical Empire Test won't do a thing to stop anti-war, anti-trade, anti-globalization factions from continuing to distort the term beyond recognition. We can expect the word imperialism to experience a fate similar to that of "progressive," "liberal," and even "democratic" -- all of which have probably been damaged beyond repair, as well. Luckily, even though words are born and then die, language as a system is adaptive. And while we may never get the term "imperialism" back from its linguistic hall of mirrors, hopefully overuse will dilute the loadedness of the term as much as it has its meaning.

Still. Any way you look at it, the US is not an empire.
Do check out the piece and think wisely on the words and ideas you bandy about in your speech and writings everyday. Sometimes you can make some of the worst arguments by wrongly using certain words.

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