“War is peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” With this oxymoronic yet powerful slogan, Ingsoc in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four demonstrates its omnipotent capability of thought manipulation by which the meaning of words follows nothing but its will. Thankfully, people today are not forced to accept contradictions embodied by one Party but can choose between warring factions on how to apply our dearest beliefs in liberty, patriotism, and justice.
To be clear, scholars throughout history have never reached a consensus over the implications of these noble ideals. While Plato explores an eternal Form of justice that involves harmonic balance both within one’s soul and the collective state, Aristotle, with his empirical approach, explains “justice in the narrower sense” that entails everyone receiving their “due.” Hegel, idealizing principles from history, sees freedom in a “positive” light through which individuals can fully realize their potentials under guidance provided by an ethical community. Mill, from his utilitarian standpoint, argues for “negative” freedom against government intervention or public pressure in regulating practices that affect only their exercisers. These disagreements, however reflective of personal “instincts” and biases as Nietzsche claim they are, accumulate to a collaborative effort to uncover, via varying assumptions and methods of investigations, a unified framework of definitions by which all members of society can abide.
Absent a shared set of political vocabularies, public discourse does not advance towards common ground solutions but into quagmires of finger pointing and whataboutism.
Contrary to the epistemological debates among philosophers in history, ideological conflicts in the highly polarized society of our generation prioritize the usage of lofty words in campaign speeches and attack ads but rarely discuss what lies underneath. Their meaning, rather than a product of rational deliberation, is associated with the party that uttered them and the people against whom they were directed. In the GOP playbook, liberty means firearms, charter schools, and lower taxes. On the Democratic agenda, the same concept is accompanied by access to abortion, queer rights, and economic mobility. As “freedom” and “justice” become shorthand buzzwords for controversial policy stances, a single language becomes divided among different political tribes. People of opposing sides reflexively adopt a set of interpretation and application based on their party ID without contemplating on whether their cherished motto can have universal values.
Absent a shared set of political vocabularies, public discourse does not advance towards common ground solutions but into quagmires of finger pointing and whataboutism. Before the ratification of the US Constitution, federalists and their opponents passionately disagreed over the role of a national government. Nonetheless, due to their joint commitment to upholding individual liberty against government or majority encroachment, they were able to reach a compromise with the passage of the Bill of Rights. Nowadays, however, the two parties treat concepts like “fiscal responsibility” differently according to who is in the White House. In 2023, Republicans slammed Biden for unaccountable spending and pushed for deficit reduction. Today, as GOP leaders like Mike Johnson and John Thune back debt limit hikes, Democrats flipped the script, calling Trump’s tax reform fiscally reckless and pointing to an additional $37 trillion in potential debts. By prioritizing loyalty over principles in this series of partisan side switching, lawmakers have undermined the basis for negotiation and compromise, trapping the nation in cycles of continuing resolutions designed to conceal the failure of Congress.
Short of an army or direct sources of revenue, judges rely on public support and faith in the rule of law to enforce their decisions. In want of an agreement on what the laws mean, the society deteriorates into the rule of man.
Besides destroying the fabrics of civic discourse, the erosion of the meaning of words turns statutory and constitutional provisions into manipulatable pieces of paper subject to interpretations by the governing administration. It cannot be denied that the common law jurisprudence, plenished with various precedents and contradicting original intents, has always abounded with opportunities for judges and the executive branch to advance their ideological preferences. Nevertheless, in their 2011 book on the constraints faced by the Supreme Court, Bailey and Maltzman observe that when the plain text of a clause points unambiguously to one direction (for instance, the Free Speech Clause), Justices tend to follow that directive in all cases without exhibiting partiality. Successive occupants of the White House, however, have now asked the judicial branch to defy the English language. The asylum restrictions imposed by the Biden administration, for example, directly challenged the Refugee Act of 1980 which allows for asylum application by any noncitizen “irrespective of…status.” More recently, novel legal arguments have been proposed to drastically alter the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and rumors have surfaced on how to render the two-term limit imposed by the Twenty-second Amendment moot. Short of an army or direct sources of revenue, judges rely on public support and faith in the rule of law to enforce their decisions. In want of an agreement on what the laws mean, the society deteriorates into the rule of man.
When discussing the necessary conditions for the survival of democracies, Mill argues that shared memories of significant past events provide the constructing blocks of common political vocabularies. Hence, debates over the 1619 Project and teachings of the critical race theory, for instance, are not just about the history of slavery and segregation but understanding the concept of racial justice today. If this is true, current disputes over the meaning of specific phrases reveal a deeper identity crisis that America is facing when processing its complicated history. While the MAGA movement longs for the period of populist ascendancy and territorial expansion embodied by Andrew Jackson’s portrait in Trump’s Oval Office, liberal groups are pushing to rename high schools and public monuments after civil rights leaders. As Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito establish the “history and tradition” test for Establishment Clause and Second Amendment jurisprudence, stipulating state and federal lawmakers to comply with laws of the 18th century, liberal Justices cite precedents from the Warren Court in dissent. The question is clear: Should America today emphasize its roots from the revolutionary years that paved the way for isolationism with a fight for self-sufficiency, or see itself as an immediate descendant of the Civil Rights Movement that triumphed inclusion and diversity? So long as this question is unsettled, polarization will persist—and with it, the powerlessness of words.
Should America today emphasize its roots from the revolutionary years that paved the way for isolationism with a fight for self-sufficiency, or see itself as an immediate descendant of the Civil Rights Movement that triumphed inclusion and diversity?
Being a melting pot of heterogeneous cultures, religions, and ethnic origins, this country relies on Verfassungspatriotismus, a patriotism for its constitution and founding principles, to unify its people and defend its republican institutions. Yet by associating fundamental concepts and values with partisan labels, we risk neutralizing such patriotism and effectively nullifying the constitution. A democracy rooted in language requires a shared political lexicon—constructed through open discourse and critical evaluation—without which we edge closer to the very dystopia Orwell forewarned.
Michael Qian ‘25 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at mankang@wustl.edu.