Time and again I have been alerted to the tragic pollution of
the rain forest, to the alarming contamination of the Arctic and to
the rapid defilement of our fisheries. Yet there is something that
has become far more sullied than any of the aforementioned but
receives surprisingly little attention: the English language.
The number of students who cannot speak English correctly, even
at the finest universities in our great nation, never ceases to
amaze me. While I am certainly no pedant when it comes to grammar,
all I ask is a basic understanding of simple words.
At first I was befuddled and later, only sad. After
contemplating this disturbing trend, it became clear to me that
hordes of students nationwide simply do not understand the words
coming out of their mouths.
Perhaps it is the product of a missing father, a missing
dictionary or a missing conscience. But, no matter what the cause,
it needs fixing.
Countless times I have heard the following platitude from
seemingly intelligent students and the occasional confused don:
“Bush is a fascist!”
Hey, idiots ““ Bush is not a fascist. He is not even
remotely close to a fascist. You clearly have no idea what the word
fascist means.
Bush may be a bad president, he may be a slow man, he may
implement disagreeable policies, he may Bible-thump every now and
then, but calling him a fascist is tantamount to calling him an
airplane ““ it just doesn’t make any sense.
Fascism is marked by dictators, often racist in nature, who
suppress dissent through terror and commit mass murder in the name
of wildly xenophobic delusions.
Bush’s cabinet is the antithesis of racism. It is the
epitome of multiculturalism, with blacks, Mexicans and Asians
heading some of the most important positions in our government.
Freedom abounds as you and I retain the protected right to
criticize the administration both in print and media, which I have
done in the past and will continue to do. The United States has
that spectacular little mechanism in place called a separation of
powers, which prevents totalitarianism. Indeed, these
characteristics typify liberalism’s triumph over fascism.
One needn’t look further than Mussolini’s own
definition of fascism to understand the absurdity at hand. In a
piece co-authored in 1932 succinctly entitled, “What is
Fascism?” Mussolini writes that, “Fascism conceives of
the State as an absolute.” He continues to explain that only
war can mark “nobility.”
Whatever else the people of the United States are, we have no
great love for war. If anything, a virulent strain of isolationism
““ even during the worst of humanitarian crises ““ has
all too often afflicted American policy makers.
The fact remains that the United States retaliated after Sept.
11 against two of the most deplorable governments of the past few
decades, who had actively harbored terrorists and pursued reckless
policies that oppressed and endangered millions.
The impulse to label Bush a fascist is, at best, a pathetic
misunderstanding of the word, and at worst, a pitifully lame
tactic. After such a vapid remark, words naturally begin to lose
their meanings.
What, after all, would you call a real fascist leader if one
ever did come along?
We have plenty of present-day fascists ““ they are the
Baathists, the bin Ladens and the Kim Jong-ils, to name a few. It
is they who are the war-mongers who have killed untold numbers in
the name of their cruel fantasies. It is they who hearken back to
the absolutism and fascism of Mussolini and Stalin. It is they who
celebrate the cult of mass death.
There is no need to “cry wolf” when so many real
wolves live among us.
Lenin’s famous order to “shoot more
professors” smacked of anti-liberalism at its worst.
Stalin’s sinister “doctor’s plot” had its
own distinct fascist stench. Franco’s quest to return to the
Middle Ages and the Crusades was religious-based fascism, but
fascism nonetheless.
Author Paul Berman incredulously asks, “And you think that
a few corrupt insider contracts with Bush’s cronies at
Halliburton and a bit of retrograde Bible-thumping and Bush’s
ridiculous tax cuts and his bonanzas for the super-rich are
indistinguishable from that? ““ indistinguishable from
fascism? From a politics of slaughter?”
While some students may think it cool to label Bush a fascist,
it is wholly inaccurate. It disrespects history by tainting truth
and fact. It besmirches the English language by unjust hyperbole
and nasty disingenuous slander. Such tendentious attacks deserve no
place in the discourse of rational beings.
More than that, though, it just makes the accuser look stupid.
And it must make Osama extremely happy to know that these
ridiculous cliches are being shouted at campuses all across our
great nation.
Please, people ““ stop being so stupid. And for the love of
God, pick up a dictionary.
Keyes is a third-year Middle Eastern studies student. E-mail
him at dkeyes@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.