The importance of diction to liberty

Posted on northeastshooters:

Originally Posted by squarooticus

Don't give in to statist kool-aid/newspeak. There is no such thing as a privately-owned "public establishment". All such "public establishments" are actually private property and should be off-limits to government do-gooders.

Kyle

If you're a libertarian, yes. If you're in the real world, no.

By even submitting to the term "public establishment," you are providing ammunition to advocates of government control over private property. You call it the "real world"; I call it acceding a battle in the war of rhetoric.

You don't refer to your (perhaps hypothetical) AR-15 as an "assault weapon", do you? By virtue of the existence of that phrase as a term of law for the past 12 years, it certainly has meaning, and it applies to any pre-ban AR-15. But for an advocate of liberty to use that term is to admit that there's something unique about "assault weapons" that may call for restrictions.

The same is true of "public establishment": by replacing "private" with "public," you immediately give credence to the notion that the "public" should have some say about how business is run inside those four walls, when in fact the only people who should have a say are the owners and the paying customers who can choose to patronize it or not.

Be precise. Say what you mean, not what the whack job, nanny state, anti-freedom nutsos want you to say. All principled freedom lovers are libertarians, whether they want to believe it or not. Everyone else is just a statist with different colored stripes.

Kyle