Values Voters

George Will's column about "values voters" provides a good example of the meaningless language constantly used in the political sphere:

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

Of course everyone votes based on the ideals they value. If someone thinks choice is more important than innocent life, it is still a personal value (a disordered one, but a value nonetheless). But catch phrases and meaningless metaphors are the norm -- politicians speak, and we listen, in soundbites (How many times have we heard politicians juxtapose "family values" and "valuing families" and not forced them to explain exactly what they mean?).

In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell addresses several bad writing habits that have led to the decline of the English language. One problem is the use of "dying metaphors":

A newly-invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, an axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.

The new problem is not using phrases that have lost their meaning, but inventing phrases that don't mean anything to begin with. But until the values voters decide to value clarity and meaning, politicians will continue to toe the line in their use of language.