The philosopher’s name was Confucius, and he was referring to a phenomenon that is all around us today. He was talking about Unspeak.
Let’s see how it works. What do the phrases ‘pro-choice’, ‘tax relief’, and ‘Friends of the Earth’ have in common? They are all names that also contain political arguments, in a way that alternative names – say, ‘opposed to the criminalisation of abortion’, ‘tax reduction’, or ‘a group of environmental campaigners’ – do not.
Campaigners against abortion had from the early 1970s described their position as defending a ‘right to life’. The opposing camp, previously known as ‘pro-abortionists’, then renamed their position ‘pro-choice’, rhetorically softening what they favoured. Defending a woman’s ‘right to choose’ whether to have a baby or not, the slogan ‘pro-choice’ appealed to an apparently inviolable concept of individual responsibility. It sought to cast adversaries as ‘anti-choice’: as interfering, patriarchal dictators. However, the phrase also carried unfortunate associations with the consumerist ideal of ‘choice’, as though choosing cereals in a supermarket were an appropriate model for ethics