CHAUTAUQUA–To the untrained ear, the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative can sound innocent.

It stems from a group at an American university. And who wants harmful language?

Yet you, faithful reader of this column, aren’t an untrained ear, so you’re likely to think further. When you do, you may well ask: Who decides what is harmful? By what criteria? Who will do the eliminating? By what means?

Hmmmm.

And once you read the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative’s, or EHLI’s, 2022 document, you realize these are only the beginning of the good questions.

For example, the document urges:

¯ Using “cancel”/”end” instead of “abort,” because the latter “can unintentionally raise religious/moral concerns over abortion.”

¯ Using “late summer” instead of “Indian summer,” because the latter implies “that Indigenous people are chronically late. While it may be innocently used to describe a beautiful time of year, it could have an unintended negative impact on those who hear it.”

¯ Using “accomplish(ing) two things at once” instead of “kill(ing) two birds with one stone,” because the latter “normalizes violence against animals.”

¯ Using “multiple ways to accomplish the task” instead of “more than one way to skin a cat,” for the same reason.

¯ Using “give it a go” or “try” instead of “pull the trigger,” because the latter “(u)nnecessarily uses violent imagery to encourage another person to do something.”

¯ Using “situation room” instead of “war room,” because the latter is an “(u)nneccesary use of violent language.”

¯ Using “process” instead of “submit,” because “(d)epending on the context,” the latter “can imply allowing others to have power over you,” and

¯ Using “U.S. citizen” instead of “American,” because the latter “often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the U(.)S(.) is the most important country in the Americas,” which are “made up of 42 countries.”

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Speaking at an Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, event on July 31, Hillsdale College journalism professor John Miller noted that the Americas have 35 countries, not 42.

More importantly, Miller said the point of the “American” admonition is “to wipe out a sense of American nationhood.”

Anyway, what became of this EHLI document? The university pulled it off of its website shortly after posting it, Miller said. The university wasn’t Hillsdale.

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Miller’s address focused generally on George Orwell’s 1984, which Miller says might be “the most influential political novel ever written.”

Nowadays, those advocating “diversity” rarely mean “viewpoint diversity,” Miller recalls. Even in Orwell’s own time, he saw others trying to control people’s thoughts. Miller sees the effort continuing:

¯ A decade ago, a news organization banned the use of “illegal alien.” Use “migrant” instead, came the admonition.

¯ For a social-media organization, “censorship” became “content moderation.”

Miller draws parallels to 1984’s appendix on “Newspeak.”

“Newspeak” isn’t a real language or part of a real language, except that it kind of is.

“The purpose of Newspeak,” Orwell, a native of England, mockingly writes, “was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc (that is, English socialism), but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

Beware those seeking to make “modes of thought” other than their own “impossible.”

“We live in a great, free, and prosperous country,” Miller recalls, yet that “is not inevitable.” So “let us be warned.”

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ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

At its events, ABC and its supporters welcome and encourage “viewpoint diversity,” also known as “other modes of thought.”

At 1 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 9, at the Fenton History Center, 67 Washington St., Jamestown, Dr. Randy Elf will lead a discussion on Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 U.S. Supreme Court opinion addressing law targeting Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. The discussion will include a dissent by Justice Robert Jackson. The event, part of the center’s local-history series, is free and open to the public.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF