Nixon and the tyranny of words

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33092, 6 December 1972, Page 25

Nixon and the tyranny of words

By

JAMES RESTON,

of the “Neva York Times," through N.Z.P.A.)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5. In the brutal language of politics, not only men and women, but words, lose their reputations. The word “appeasement," for example, was a casualty of the Second World War, and in the present struggle between freedom and authority in America, “permissive” and “permissiveness” have come to mean a weakness, or slackness of human character, and a menace to the nation.

Uris was not what these words meant originally. Even the latest "American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language” says that the word “appease” means “to bring peace, to placate, soothe, to satisfy or relieve." In other words, to do what every sensible family does to hold things together. But since Neville Chamberlain, in the tragic struggle at Munich, "appeasement” has come to mean “making dishonourable concessions to evil men to save your hide for a little while.”

“Permissive” is now going through a similar transformation, from meaning “lenient, tolerant, permitting discretion , . .’ f to meaning “the defiance of all traditional values, and an invitation to moral and political chaos."

It is ironical that President Nixon has emerged from his landslide victory calling for change and moral reformation, which was the theme of his defeated opponent in the election campaign. But he is fighting “permissiveness” on very narrow grounds. He is saying that

the welfare system is slack and corrupt, and that the poor, the young, and the noisy blacks, women, and dissenters in the universities, press, television, and even in the business community, should “shape up,” and back the President when he makes tough decisions. However, he does not carry the good fight against selfishness and permissiveness all the way. He is for disciplining the cheaters on welfare, but not for disciplining cheaters in business. He is against “throwing dollars” at the problems of health, education, and welfare, but he is “throwing dollars” at the problems of defence at the Pentagon, and buying a volunteer defence force with a rising Pentagon budget of more than SUSBO,OOOm a year. Mr Nixon will be 60 years old in January, before his inauguration for a second term, and he knows more than most about the “permissiveness” of his own generation. He is undoubtedly right in calling for more authority, discipline, and sacrifice, but this probably means more taxes and austerity for the comfortable middle class that elected him for a second term, and so far he has not called on them to make sacrifices. George Orwell noted this connection between the imprecision of language and the corruption of politics long ago. In a brilliant essay, “Politics and the English Language,” he said: "A man

may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish thoughts ... If

thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” This may very well be what is happening now here in America. President Nixon, after his spectacular election victory, has committed himself to a battle in his second term against “permissiveness" in the nation. He has said that we are slack and undisciplined. He has even been bold enough to say that his own Administration is loose and overmanned, and needs to be trimmed down. No fairminded person could dispute him on that point.

But in the process, he has been very imprecise and partisan in defining a very good point. He has left the country with the impression that he thinks the welfare system is a mess, which it is: that the militant young women and blacks and university protesters have affronted the comfortable American middle - class majority, which they have; ana, therefore, that he must try, in his second term, to put an end to this “permissiveness.”

He is against permissiveness, which he defines as acquiescence to blackmail by the welfare poor, and weak accommodation with young dissenters, but he is permissive with the most wasteful military establishment in history at the Pentagon, permissive with defence contractors, permissive with his political allies at the Watergate,, and permissive with the

fund-raisers who financed his re-election. In short, the President is in danger of debasing his own principle. Very few people in Washington would argue against his cry for more discipline in American life, but to be effective, it has to be applied across the board, not only on welfare policy, but on tax policy. Words have to be used accurately to have effective meaning. If Mr Nixon is to use his second term to bring an end to “permissiveness,” meaning slackness and selfishness, then, to be effective, it has to be applied to the permissiveness of the rich and of the comfortable majority, as well as to the poor. The young did not invent permissiveness. It is all around us, at the top of the Government, and business, and the professions, presided over by ageing men who practice the slackness they deplore in the young. Given this situation, it is odd that Mr Nixon uses these words and principles so casually. He has won a great victory, and now has a chance to make a new beginning, but if he is going to begin it with a moral crusade against permissiveness, he is probably going to have to apply it to the rich and to the middle class, as well as to the poor.