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Stating the obvious, we live in a world striving, against all reasonableness, to be liberal. The form this liberalism seems to be taking manifests in the foolish attempt to avoid any and all offense. It should be obvious that this effort is nonsensical as there is no possible chance of not causing offense if we are all to be free to be ourselves – which is the foundation of liberalism. Think in general terms: how could a pessimist avoid giving offense to an optimist? The generally adopted method appears to be to cancel that side of the equation least liked. We avoid pessimists giving offense by simply denying the right to be pessimist. Hardly a liberal approach, when you think about it. The least liberal people are liberals!

At the heart of the current understanding of liberalism is the fraudulent belief that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. This simply is not the case. One may be entitled to an informed opinion, but this is not what is generally meant by the claim made by most people. The problem with this belief is that it tends to lead to an ignorance of the thoughts and opinions of others. Because our opinions tend not to be informed, we are unable to listen to those who may hold opposing (offensive) views. This deafness stems from a fear of threat – because I depend only on my own (uninformed) opinion, anyone who does have a well-thought out opposing view poses a threat because I have neither a way to respond to them nor any solid foundation for my views, so no way to defend what I claim to believe. My only possible defense is to prohibit the other from expressing their opposition.

One tactic adopted by the liberal is the enforced liberality of the opposition. We see this with the present assault on pronouns. Because those who hold the view that they are entitled to be whatever they wish without fear of opposition, they insist that anything which is a perceived threat must be brought into alignment with their own views. This is difficult to do with language, especially with those bits of language so integral to its meaning-making ability. Thus, we find ourselves in the ridiculous situation of having to adopt plural pronouns for those people who feel threatened by gendered singular pronouns.

Anyone who gives even a modicum of thought to language must recognise that, while it is the clearest indication of human intelligence, it is inevitably limited. Language, while being fundamentally metaphorical, is conventional – it works on general principles. Take an abstract noun, for instance, (let’s say ‘love’) and ask any number of people what it means. Likely, you will receive as many different definitions as people asked. Yet, we can still talk to each other about ‘love’ because the word has a conventional (agreed) meaning – even if we do not have a definite understanding of what it means.

To feel threatened by language is to reveal nothing about the language. What is revealed is one’s own insecurities and neuroses. Of course, language is a powerful tool and can be used to intimidate and oppress. Except, in essence, it cannot. It is never the language, per se, which intimidates so much as the intent of the speaker and the response of the hearer. Whatever one may think of Adolf Hitler’s oratorical skills, it was not merely his persuasive use of language which cajoled Germans into adopting National Socialist policies. And, yet, not all Germans subscribed to Nazi ideology.

That one is prepared to adopt a plural pronoun out of fear of being constrained by a singular one says far more about that person’s lack of identity than it does about the limitations of language. A person, comfortable in their sense of self, recognises and deems irrelevant whatever is superfluous to actual being-in-oneself. Like the abstract noun ‘love’, I don’t need to have any specific definition of what is meant when I talk of ‘self’; I only need to be aware of my sense of self, untroubled by whatever anyone else might think.

This is not to say that I shouldn’t listen to others. However great my insight into myself, the insight of others remains just as valuable and can add to my ever-growing self-awareness. Different opinions are not a threat; they are the sustenance of growth.

Because I am aware of what I believe constitutes ‘self’ and because I am aware and accept that I am being-towards-growth, I am both able to hold a (somewhat) stable idea of myself while remaining open to and willing to accept the thoughts and opinions of others. In a sense, my sense of self is fluid, and, precisely because it is so, there is no need to cancel out the thoughts of others as their opposing views hold no threat. Fluidity, almost by definition, should be able to incorporate the views of others, rather than, as seems to be the case in the modern liberal understanding, feel threatened by them.

When we allow the least secure to determine policy, we arrive at this point in history, predicted by George Orwell, in which we have begun to change the past. Just as Winston Smith, in Orwell’s 1984, was tasked with scouring the pages of the past and changing them to reflect the whims of the present, so we now scour the pages of past writers to expunge whatever we deem offensive. This has been done before with the works of Beatrix Potter, is currently being done to Roald Dahl and just how far off is the day when Shakespeare is deemed to require the liberal inquisitor’s imprimatur?

While it seems acceptable to actually change the words of writers of literary fiction, science, as yet, is simply ignored. This cannot remain the case. At some not too distant point, one can imagine Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species suffering the same fate. After all, the argument of this great work of modern science depicts evolution as the ‘survival of the fittest’. The modern liberal must argue, instead, for the survival of the weakest. For only the weak need a world free of threat. The fittest are those who face and overcome the threat. The weak are those who pretend the threat doesn’t exist. Thus, they change the words of the past, cancel the words of the present, and determine the words of the future.