By DONALD DeMARCO
My biology teacher of many moons ago took perverse delight in terrorizing his students while they were taking an exam. “Plagiarism,” he would bellow, “is arousing the suspicion of the proctor.” He enjoyed the sound of his own voice and repeated this warning many times. He intended it to be more intimidating than cautionary. I found it to be as amusing, however, and remained confident that a mere flicker of suspicion was never going to convict anyone of the heinous crime of plagiarism.
At the same time, I realized that our watchful supervisor was giving unaccustomed breadth to the word “plagiarism,” imbuing it with a far-reaching application so that it could indict both the guilty and the innocent in the same breath.
Words are defined. This is the essential purpose of the dictionary. This means that they have boundaries. Their boundaries set apart from each other what the word means and what it does not mean, just as my fence delineates where my backyard ends and where that of my neighbor’s begins.
“Left” does not mean “right”; nor does “right” mean “left.” Every word is, at the same time, exclusive as well as inclusive. In thinking back on my old biology professor, I now see that he was ahead of his time, allowing a word to break out of its dictionary definition and extend to what the word was never supposed to reach. His overextended use of the word “plagiarism” did not worry me. What worries me in the contemporary world is how this same disregard for the integrity of the word is being practiced by government leaders and members of the Supreme Court.
Paul Martin, former prime minister of Canada, told the media that he legalized same-sex marriage because, as a lawyer, he was obliged to interpret the law as broadly as possible.
Edmund Burke, on the other hand, established a more sensible shibboleth for lawyers to follow when he stated: “Law sharpens the mind by narrowing it.”
In jurisprudence, one does not convict, out of zeal for being broad, all the suspects, but narrows the list until he finds the one who is guilty.
Thinking is a narrowing activity. It separates what is true from what is false, the evidence from the hearsay, what is relevant from what is irrelevant. When we overextend the meaning of marriage we begin to apply it to something that is not marriage.
President Obama enthusiastically supports marriage of the same-sex variety because, as he puts it, it allows you to be “free to marry who [sic] you love.” No doubt this is a broader use of the word marriage than the president intended since it would include parents marrying their children and siblings marrying each other. But when we stretch the meaning of word beyond its limits, how do we know when to stop? The press has reported about a lonely cowboy who wants to marry his horse.
John McKellar, a self-identified “openly gay male,” founded an organization in 1997 called HOPE (Homosexuals Opposed to Pride Extremism). He is fully respectful of the meaning of marriage that includes the four prohibitions that distinguish what marriage is from what marriage is not: “you can only marry one person at a time, only someone of the opposite sex, never someone beneath a certain age, and not a close blood relative.” Homosexuals have the same right to marriage as heterosexuals, but each must abide by the four prohibitions.
Closely allied with the hyperinflation of the word “marriage” is a similar expansion of the words “bigot” and “discrimination.” The former word, freed from its reference to a stubbornly intolerant or prejudiced person, now extends to anyone who defends traditional marriage. Presumably, anyone from Moses to John McKellar is a bigot. “Discrimination” is no longer restricted to unjust discrimination but now includes making virtually any distinction whatsoever. Hence, it is alleged to be discriminatory against women to ban them from a barbershop quartet, or discriminatory against atheists to schedule a formal prayer at a Catholic university.
By logical extension, everyone becomes a bigot and any distinction whatsoever constitutes discrimination. The balloon expands when inflated until it bursts. The rubber band stretches when pulled until it snaps. Words, too, have their limitations. They cease to be true to their meaning when their limitations are not respected.
Words should remain connected with thought in order to stimulate thinking. To isolate the word from thought is to deprive it of its purpose. Samuel Johnson once remarked that “one of the disadvantages of wine is to make a man mistake words for thought.” Political correctness can function as a verbal intoxicant. Disconnected from thought, words becomes “weasel words,” “buzz words,” “spin words,” or simply “gobbledygook.” This makes dialogue and discussion impossible.
Dr. Johnson preferred sober personal exchanges: “That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.”
Words are conveyors of thought. They should sharpen the mind, not dull it. Most unfortunately, the modern world is turning them into the equivalent of traffic signs that prompt automatic responses. Marriage, bigotry, and discrimination are words that are too important to be deprived of their avenues to thought. How serious is the matter? We are advised in Matt. 12:36 that “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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