Don’t worry, only the TRUTH gets through….
With the addition of a simple Google add-on to your Chrome browser, each and every appearance of the term pro-life will be replaced with, “anti-choice,” rescuing sensitive abortion advocates from having to endure a a term that reminds them that there’s a material difference between abortion and choosing which flavor to get at Baskin Robbins. This means that the journalistic, scholarly and expositional communications of individuals with varying views from the Great and All -knowing Left will be edited without their approval, and can be copied, quoted and distributed in that weakened and distorted form.
We should have seen this coming. The anti-free speech instincts in the modern progressive movement betrays its totalitarian DNA. This is the next step down the slippery into the abyss from oppressive political correctness, from intimidating and punishing those who express opinions and positions that the left deems hateful (or too close to the truth), to making it impossible to communicate non-conforming ideas aty all by translating them into something less persuasive.
What other words and phrases will be subjected to this treatment? I’ll give odds that the next one will change “illegal immigration” to just “immigration,” not that the mainstream media isn’t regularly doing that already.
Blogger Jazz Shaw adeptly illustrates the biased and sinister nature of this advance in involuntary language control as he questions why Google would allow it:
“Would Google tolerate a tool which took every liberal diatribe on web and substituted the term “gun control” with “anti-gun rights” in the text? How about if it replaced “voter suppression” with “voter fraud prevention” in every voter ID opinion piece? Somehow I suspect it would be less well received.”*
I rather suspect so as well, except that I can’t imagine any conservatives—or sane people, really—who would want to deceive themselves as well as others by altering the words a political or policy adversary intended to use. Who would approve of this but addled social justice nincompoops? Think Progress, for example, thinks the extension is just marvy-poo, and interviews some pro-killing healthy innocent human life in the womb activists (I have an extension that changes “pro-choice ” to that) who explain that it’s so obvious that people who oppose abortion are only interested in enslaving women and controlling their bodies, and what the heck does this “life” stuff have to do with abortion anyway?
This extension is the best Orwell imitation I have seen in a long time. Anyone who applauds this would applaud software that instantly transforms a carefully reasoned essay by George Will or Charles Krauthammer into Duck Dynasty-ese, or make a Robert Samuelson op-ed read like it was written by Ted Nugent. After all, it’s all the same evil thinking: why not remove the obfuscation and seduction of those misleading words?
I know, I know, the extension is stupid and embarrassing, and ultimately trivial, except in this: I can’t respect or trust American citizens who think like those who think such a thing is appropriate. Their values and ethics alarms are damaged; they are sliding to dark places where Americans were never meant to go. More and more, I see the tools and logic of totalitarianism being embraced by the left. Right now I just pity and distrust these people.
Soon I will fear them.
*A tech-savvy commenter points out below that Google is out of this loop: anyone can develop and add extensions to Chrome. Anyone but me…
Ethics Alarms 
Don’t blame Google for this one. They just make the browser– anyone can make an extension. (I’ve made a few.)
The article says it was “created by an anonymous activist in collaboration with the National Institute for Reproductive Health Action Fund”.
Thanks. I would no more know how to make an extension than fly.
Adam you are correct that this is likely a piece of third party software. However, this extension is inline with the google chairman opinion article about a spell checker for hate speech.
I’ve tried to avoid swearing these past few years…
but…
are you fucking kidding me?
Are we that dishonest now?
(this is why it is nearly impossible to take any leftist seriously at this point…other than that they have substantial numbers…which is terrifying)
Thanks…I’m glad you did that, because I was tempted, but I already confessed anger at the Rutgers nonsense, and I don’t want to be the Angry Ethics Guy.
Except I can’t help but view only dark devastating solutions to this problem…or even darker more devastating continuations of this problem.
It’s like we’re really really really stupid and just want to ignore history on these types of things…
I think Angry Ethics Guy has a pretty nice ring to it. Faintly redolent of a subtle counter weight to Seth McFarland.
I’m happy with it. How about creating an app that transliterates Black to Babies, as in Whose Life Matters?
It isn’t trivial. It’s taking us ever more quickly to the tipping point. Can re-education camps be far in the future?
Maybe if we said pro-baby, or pro-infant, or even pro-fetus. Maybe anti-death, anti-murder, anti-killing.
Of course that’s just delaying the inevitable and playing their game.
I’m guessing you’d have to enable that app in your browser and so only the terminally Orwellian – I can’t think of another word that isn’t obscenely insulting at the moment – will do it. I admit that it looks like being a large number of people but perhaps they are too busy looking for things to be offended by and haven’t worked out how to enable an extension!
It might be installed/added at particular places though like libraries, schools, colleges, and other places where a person in charge likes the censorship idea. Then the person using the browser might not know what is being changed.
(shrug) A few years ago they came up with an extension called “unbaby.me” that would automatically replace pictures of babies on social media with other stuff, for use against oversharing parents. It should come as no surprise that a similar extension to keep certain phrases out of searches is emerging. It seems that a lot of users want the internet to be a perfect echo chamber.
This has such potential! Just think… I could finally change “feminist” to “rabid fucking idiot”, “Microagression” (TYSRL) to “BLAH BLAH BLAH”, “patriarchy” to “penis envy” and “Black Lives Matter” to “domestic terrorist organization,”
Don’t well exercised brains already do that?
The Google Chrome extension is one of the heraldings of our new country, Ameri-la-la-la-la-la-rica. It’s been transformed. Five la’s, now. We’re there!
They don’t need an extension. They could just use my mother who is notorious in our family for twisting the words of others to better fit the fantasy in her head – often leaving the rest of us slack-jawed when the revision of what we actually said makes its way back around.
SIS????
My app idea: substitute the word “peace” for “war”, “freedom” for “slavery”, and “ignorance” for “knowledge”. Heck, why not “Abu Bakr al” for “Adolf Hilter”, “Moa Tse Dong”, “Osama bin Laden”, or ‘Republicans’!
Tell Google and others what you think of this extension…
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/choice-language/bfpnbfcglkogjgceechnidfcmpchobmd/reviews
I’ve seen other Chrome extensions that make other substitutions. E.g replacing “God” with “Nicholas Cage”. A lot of them are jokes, or humorous ways to make a point, or whatever. Surprisingly few of them involve Chuck Norris.
How about an app that replaces the term “white male” with “Jew”.
I wonder why authors and columnists would end up looking like David Duke?