As reported by Not the Bee on Aug. 23, a think-tank named Third Way recently published a list of 45 words and phrases which it says “progressives” ought to stop using inasmuch as they tend to alienate most normal Americans. The implication is clearly that it is not Right-Wing fanatics who find the Left idiotic, but people of simple common sense.
Among the designated terms are the following: “privilege”…. suggesting successful people never earn their lifestyles, but gain them either through greed or mere good luck…; “cultural appropriation” …. suggesting naming a baseball team The Cleveland Indians is an act of thievery; “environmental violence” ….. suggesting the mining of coal is a criminal act; “hetero-normative”…. suggesting males and females are not really nature’s norm; “patriarchy”…. suggesting that Western European Men who, a thousand years ago, went to war to defend their Wives and families against foreign invaders, were really just trying to keep Women politically impotent; etc., etc., one gross simplification after another.
Not the Bee claims Third Way to be a Left of Centre platform while it is seen by many to be purely Centrist in its attempt to bring the Left and Right together. I understand Not the Bee’s perspective, however, in that the extensive list it describes suggests it is the terminology used by the Left rather than the actual substance of its beliefs that has led people of common sense to turn against it. This is nonsense. The notion of “privilege,” for example, pervades contemporary Leftist [i.e., Marxist] Ideology, all of Western Man’s achievements supposedly being the result not of his Cultural Superiority to most of the rest of the species, but of his unparalleled greed and arrogance. Such is the simplistic belief underlying most every policy presently pursued by the “woke” [??] Left.