Swanky Conservative

Yes, Virginia; there is a difference. Lee Harris writes:

George Orwell in his novel 1984 envisioned a world in which the most basic concepts, such as freedom and slavery, had been conflated by an intellectual elite intent on making ordinary people unaware that there was any real difference between them. Chomsky’s high priest, Steven Pinker, in The Language Instinct sneered at Orwell’s fear as groundless. George Grote might beg to differ with Mr. Pinker. After all, the difference between empire and hegemony is precisely analogous to the difference between freedom and slavery. The nations of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War were virtually enslaved by the Warsaw Pact, and the brutal invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia displayed this fact before the eyes of the whole world. The nations of NATO, on the other hand, were kept free by virtue of American hegemony — in Grote’s and not Chomsky’s sense of the word. To permit linguistic sleight of hand to blur this vital difference would be bad enough if it came from a vulgar demagogue; but when it comes from one of America’s most respected intellectuals, it is, frankly, disgraceful.

But then there is one thing we need to keep in mind. Both Chomsky and Pinker are professors. George Grote was not. Indeed, he was a banker and a Radical member of Parliament: he was conversant with the nature of things, and how the world really worked. For him, it made a difference that things should be called by their proper name. For our intellectual elite, on the other hand, words mean whatever they want them to mean — just like in Alice in Wonderland.

Chomsky as the Jabberwocky. Interesting.