By Dan Mahoney
Those who love our country's principles of justice — equality of rights, equality under the law, merit and responsibility — must not be taken in when old and precious words are given radically new and pernicious meanings. Such manipulation of language is a hallmark of ideological despotism that aims at the destruction of the capacity of citizens to speak and reason together about the "advantageous and the just," as Aristotle put it so well more than two millennia ago at the beginning of his Politics.
The clear meaning of words must be respected if civic life is to endure in any meaningful way. Language, which is never merely "private language," is rooted in common experience and, when undistorted by ideologues and tyrants, gives us access to a shared public space where the virtues and vices of human beings come to sight. Such is the venerable Western conception of the human being as a rational, ethical, and political animal, a conception challenged by every form of totalitarianism.
In the 20th century, the integrity of language came under systematic assault from totalitarian ideologues committed to the transformation of human nature and society. Cherished old words and concepts with tried-and-true meanings ("oldspeak," as the totalitarians called them in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four) gave way to "newspeak," an ideological distortion of language that was woefully "wooden" (i.e., jargon-laden) and that deliberately undermined the human capacity to understand the most elementary realities before us. The age-old distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, were replaced by an ideology of "progress" where being "on the right side of History" is all that really matters. Being "reactionary" became the worst thing imaginable, requiring "reeducation" if not elimination. | 
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