A name by any other rose…

Why words matter

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet - Romeo & Juliet, Act II, Scene II

William Shakespeare was a master wordsmith. He was unique among his peers, and it could be argued there have been few since who could pen such powerful poetry. One of the most oft repeated phrases from any of his works is, “…a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” In context, this statement conveys the idea that the words we use to name people and things do not alter the nature of that which is named. A rose will remain a rose even if we call it an airplane.

This is all well and good, but, what then does that do to the definition of the word airplane? While the rose remains the same, how we communicate has changed. Will people know to what you refer if you say, “that airplane smelled quite sweet”? You may well be referring to a thorned flower growing on a bush, but some may wonder why you’re going around sniffing a large, flying fuselage. Conversely, imagine the looks you would receive if you said, “I was sitting on a rose, cruising at thirty thousand feet, when we hit some wild turbulence!” I suspect your audience might shortly hear in their heads refrains of Napoleon XIV’s "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!"

Why does any of this matter? There is the obvious answer of being able to communicate; if words do not have common denotation, then we cannot have a conversation. Unless we agree on the meanings of words, we have verbal chaos, we talk past each other - and this is where we run into trouble. This is why the right is constantly losing the culture war.

Let’s look at a blatant, relevant, and perhaps overused example - the word woman. We all know what a woman is, but so many are unwilling any longer to accept the proper definition. President Biden’s recent Supreme Court Justice appointment, Ketanji Brown Jackson, when asked by Marsha Blackburn, “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” during her Senate confirmation hearing, answered, “no, I can’t.” When pressed, she followed with a response that she’s “not a biologist.” I’ve been on this Earth long enough to make more than 50 passes around the sun. While I was originally a biology major when I began college, I knew what a woman is long before I graduated high school. Ask any kindergartener, and you will likely receive a fairly accurate answer, even if in childish terms, as was evidenced in the movie Kindergarten Cop, when Joseph tells Mr. Kimble, “Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.” While some have been deluded into believing otherwise, it really is that simple. A woman is an adult, female human. When we accede to such terminological transformation as to allow woman to mean anything other than what it is, we put ourselves on shaky footing and will readily lose any ensuing debate.

Consider, as another example, “same-sex marriage.” In the pursuit of having such unions approved under law, the primary argument was always that homosexuals should be entitled to marry just like anyone else - it was about “equality.” The fact is, everyone already had equal access to marriage. The real argument, which no one on the right in a position to do so seemed to understand, and definitely did not take up in defense, was about the definition of marriage. Everyone, even homosexuals, have always had equal opportunity to marry - based on the proper and accepted definition of “marriage.” Aside from a few legal limitations around age, incest, and genetic issues, any man could marry any woman, and any woman could marry any man. This is the definition of marriage - a man being joined with a woman. Even now, most people still understand “marriage” to be between a man and a woman; the word marriage continues to be prefaced with “same-sex” or “homosexual” when describing a union of man with man or woman with woman. So, the real argument was not about equality, it was about terminology. This is how the battle was lost.

More recently, the CDC changed their definition of vaccine. Their prior definition was as follows:

Vaccines: The Basics

Vaccines contain the same germs that cause disease. (For example, measles vaccine contains measles virus, and Hib vaccine contains Hib bacteria.) But they have been either killed or weakened to the point that they don’t make you sick. Some vaccines contain only a part of the disease germ.

A vaccine stimulates your immune system to produce antibodies, exactly like it would if you were exposed to the disease. After getting vaccinated, you develop immunity to that disease, without having to get the disease first.

This is what makes vaccines such powerful medicine. Unlike most medicines, which treat or cure diseases, vaccines prevent them.

This definition can be found in archived copies of the CDC’s website, such as at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201223132454/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/vpd-vac-basics.html

Some time around August last year, the vaccine basics page disappeared, the definition was moved to another page, and it was modified thusly:

Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm

This was done to accommodate the Covid shots, because they wanted to continue to call them vaccines, but realized that they do not prevent infection, as the original definition stated. Yet immunity and slowing/stopping transmission is how the shots continued to be pushed. In this case, the change in terminology was covert in order to protect the CDC from criticism for the failure of the shots to provide, as they claimed the Covid shots would, the protection vaccines are purported to provide.

This is a standard tactic of progressives - use terms in ways they haven’t been prior and then try to force everyone to go along. This is how we end up with boys in girls bathrooms, or women getting massacred by men in MMA melees. This is how poison gets pushed as protective palliatives. This is how society crumbles.

It should be clear now that words matter. You should now comprehend: we must take a stand against those who would change the meanings of words to suit their agenda. If we do not, we open ourselves to cultural chaos. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but it is still a rose; likewise, an airplane will never be a rose, even if we choose to call it one.