New Definitions

Is any high school graduate of the boomer generation not haunted by memories of struggling over endless word definition lists? Those painful experiences likely scarred us for life, and who knows the extent of psychological dysfunction such oppressive “educational” methods inflicted upon us? Never fear! The era of fixed, precise word definitions is ending. Just think: No more long lists to memorize! No more restrictive concepts to cramp our style! If we feel an idea’'s traditional definition is too insensitive, intolerant or irrelevant, we can just redefine it any way we like. Public figures enjoy this new flexibility when weaselling out of misconduct accusations with statements like, “"Well, that depends on how you define (fill the blank)."” Even benign, soft-spoken, mild-mannered social progressives have joined the movement toward conceptual flexibility. By redefining, or castrating, such biased concepts as truth, good, bad, right, wrong, morality, evil, character, community, culture, home, family and marriage they are reinventing society's archaic, unfashionable wheels and setting them on the road to Utopia. Victims of our oppressive history join such social progressives, screaming from their pauper's graves for more sensitive, tolerant and relevant social definitions. The quest to remedy that intolerable intolerance began over forty years ago, when our government educational establishment, along with the more progressive private schools and many of the old-line religious denominations, began realigning their philosophies and teaching their constituents to be more sensitive and tolerant. And look at our progress! Though right-wing extremists try to argue against the benefits we've reaped from our social revolution, today's more compassionate, sensitive and tolerant culture benefits everyone. Religious fundamentalists enjoy pointing out the few insignificant statistical anomalies such as single-parent, broken and non-traditional families and the paltry number of resulting dysfunctional and violent relationships. But they won't mention how resilient the affected children can be. After all, the state doesn't mind placing them with the child-welfare system or relegating them to the loving hands of our clean, safe, well managed prison system. Our legislators are wrestling with the Federal Marriage amendment. Its passage would do irreversible harm to the progressive social climate we've tried so hard to implement. And that just wouldn't be fair!