Tucker Carlson has a bad habit of referring to climate alarmism as climate 'theology.' I know what he is trying to say, but it is unseemly for a conservative to misuse a perfectly good word and denigrate that to which it refers. Natural theology, which is a branch of philosophy, is a legitimate inquiry, as is theology proper, which is not a branch of philosophy. A second example:
In the left-wing rag of record, the NYT, we find:
“When you buy gold you’re saying nothing is going to work and everything is going to stay ridiculous,” said Mackin Pulsifer, vice chairman and chief investment officer of Fiduciary Trust International in New York. “There is a fair cohort who believes this in a theological sense, but I believe it’s unreasonable given the history of the United States.”
So to believe something 'in a theological sense' is to believe it unreasonably. It follows that liberals have plenty of 'theological' beliefs. In the 'theology' of a liberal, theology can be dismissed unread as irrational.
And then there is the misuse of 'metaphysics.' I'll save that rant for later.
The wider pattern is the secularization of religious language.
Take ‘retreat.’ Time was, when one went on a retreat to get away from the world to re-collect oneself, to meditate on the state of one's soul and on first and last things. But now one retreats from the world to become even more worldly, to gear up for greater exertions in the realms of business or academe. One retreats from ordinary busy-ness to prepare for even greater busy- ness.
Another perfectly good word has been destroyed.
As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative, don't talk like a damned 'liberal.' Why the sneer quotes? Because there is nothing classically liberal about contemporary liberals who are ever on the slouch toward leftism, and its most noxious variant, 'wokery.'
Realize that we are in a war, and in a war one does not give ammo to the enemy. Do not validate, by employing, the Left's obfuscatory terminology. Never use 'woke' without sneer quotes. Never use words like 'homophobic' or 'transphobic.' Never use 'Islamophobia' as I once caught the great Victor Davis Hanson doing. A phobia is an irrational fear, and there is nothing irrational about fear of radical Islam.
Language matters. Some battles are won and lost on linguistic ground. Leftists understand this. They understand that he who controls the language controls the debate. This explains the Left's unremitting Orwellian abuse of language and their asinine question-begging and question-burying neologisms.
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