Since we throw around so many buzzwords without thinking, a little bit of linguistic reverse engineering can tell us a lot about ourselves that we might not otherwise have noticed.  Let’s start with the buzzword “self-expression.”

Dressing, decorating, and defacing ourselves are called self-expression.  So are choosing where to live, enjoying entertainment, playing games, making music, and, for that matter, making noise.  Doing things, and not doing them, are both called self-expression.  It’s self-expression to sleep around, but it’s also self-expression to be chaste.  It's self-expression to go to church, but it’s also self-expression to avoid it.

Is there anything that can’t count as self-expression?  Apparently not.  In the narrow sense, we “express” an idea, a feeling, a judgment, or an opinion only by giving voice to it.  But in the broad sense, we “express” something by manifesting or revealing it, and we manifest or reveal our “selves” in literally everything we do, whether or not we intend to.  The murderer reveals or divulges his character by murdering; the sick person reveals or divulges his state of health by throwing up.

Even so, we don’t normally use the term “self-expression” for everything we do whatsoever.  We tend to use it either for innocent things we expect others to applaud, or for unsavory things we want others to applaud.  For example, most people call writing a novel self-expression.  But people don’t ordinarily call making a pornographic film self-expression unless they want us to tolerate or approve it, and hardly anyone would call a snuff film self-expression.  (Snuff films, if you aren’t familiar with the term, are films which depict real-life murders which are committed just in order to be filmed.  Yes, that’s a thing.)

Logically, then, although everything we do is self-expression, we normally describe an action as self-expression only to say “this is good.”  Used that way, the term is powerful.  For example, foul pictures and language weren’t formerly counted as free speech because they didn’t communicate ideas and arguments.  Today, though, they are counted as free speech, just because we say they “express” the “self.”  And of course, logically, they do.  If I spout a stream of profanities, I may be expressing nothing more of myself than an urge to blow off steam.  But I may also be divulging my desire for attention, my craving to sound tough, my enjoyment of filthiness, or even my inability to express a cogent argument.

But why should the term “self-expression” have such power to connect itself with our approval?  Probably for at least two reasons.  The first is that the idea of expressing ourselves validates our narcissism.  The second is that it shields us from criticism.

As to narcissism, the idea that I am doing something to “express myself” inverts the normal order of my response to the world, turning it into a reflection of myself.  Do I worship because God is great and good, then it’s all about Him, and I am just responding.  But if I worship “because I am a religious person,” then it’s all about me.  Again:  Does my love song only celebrate how the girl makes me feel?  Then it’s all about me.  But if it celebrates the charms of the girl who elicits those feelings, then it’s about her, and takes me out of myself.

Contrast the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend the Night Together with those of Stephen Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer, and you’ll see what I mean.

As to being shielded from criticism, if I merely say “I know what I like, and I like that painting of Prometheus in chains,” my statement isn’t really about the painting at all.  It is only a description of how I feel when I look at it.  As such, it conveys a sort of “So there.”  For you might say that you don’t like the painting -- but you would hardly tell me that you don’t like my feelings about it, would you?  That would be insulting.  But if I say, “that painting of Prometheus in chains is truly beautiful,” then I am not speaking of my own feelings, except by implication.  I am primarily speaking of the painting, expressing the judgment that its qualities make it worthy to be admired.  As such, you can challenge it without insulting me.  For example, you might call my attention to qualities I have overlooked but which detract from its beauty.  Perhaps the figure is rendered carelessly, the composition is out of balance, or the coloring is putrid.

If everything is just self-expression, then I am all that matters.  I don’t have to engage anyone.  I don’t have to take disagreement seriously.  If I see something differently than you do, “Well, that’s just how I feel,” and if you see it differently than I do, “Well, that’s just your perspective.”

In the end, the freedom to express myself means nothing but the freedom not to deal with anything that isn’t me.  It allows each of us to climb into the hole of self and pull it in after him.

Have you heard this line?  “Now that we know about brain physiology, it’s obvious that there could be no such thing as free will.”

That’s like saying that the circuitry of a cellphone determines the conversations which takes place on it.

Once again cowardice is disguised as evenhandedness.  We read that "Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier described his North Star as an unwillingness to appease one side or the other through intense protests, arrests and student expulsions on his campus."

“Intense protests,” of course, means seizing buildings, disrupting classes, defacing statues, and threatening Jewish students.  So although I hope Chancellor Diermeier’s view has been misreported, it seems that he doesn’t want to “appease” either those who do these things, or those who want to arrest and expel them to protect the peaceful mission of the university.

That is appeasement, for it means that those who do these things will get away with it.

It’s one thing not to take sides about policy toward Israel.  It’s another thing not to take sides between civility and barbarism.  Disgusting.

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Caroline Aiken Koster, A Summer Break From American Disunity, illustrated a widespread confusion about what’s wrong with us these days.  It was a touching essay, and I am all for unity, but I think a mild demurral is needed.

Mrs. Koster, a New York attorney, writes that in the 1970’s, “we seemed more unified by our flag and anthem.  They represented all Americans -- whether Team USA, Archie Bunker or Fred Sanford was on the tube.  Lately, few seem satisfied with our national emblems.  Each identity group has to rejigger what should be unifying symbols to meet its separate goals.”  But “thanks to these Olympics, the nation has recaptured our flag …. every victor has been blanketed with the same star-spangled quilt and song.”

She hopes this spirit of unity might last.

What’s wrong with wanting unity?  Nothing whatsoever.  The problem lies in the underlying assumption:  That we have lost national unity because we no longer cherish it, and that we should all begin wanting it again so that we will have it again.

But no, the problem isn’t that we don’t all want unity.  What is it, then?  It would be closer to the truth – though still not quite true -- to say that our problem is that we all want different unities.  Progressives want everyone to be progressive, conservatives want everyone to be conservative.  Feminists want everyone to unite for abortion on demand, pro-life advocates want everyone to unite to protect mothers along with their babies.

But that’s not it either.  There will always be conflict and disagreement.  Wanting to become the majority isn’t bad in itself.  Conflict doesn’t threaten unity so long as we commit ourselves to rules that give each side a chance to persuade the others of what it takes to be the truth.

The real threat to unity is that in our day, one side has given up that commitment.  It wants to bludgeon, coerce, and hoodwink the rest of us into the kind of unity it wants.  Schoolchildren are indoctrinated into wokeism and parents are kept in the dark.  Opposing opinions are labelled as misinformation and suppressed.  Checks and balances are unraveled or ignored.  Opponents are sued and charged with crimes, even when the crimes must be invented.  Lying in a "good" cause is approved, and among our elites, the very idea of freedom of debate is in disfavor.

So it means much less than we think if we and our athletes blanket ourselves with the flag for a few days instead of burning it.  What matters is what we take that blanket to mean.  Don’t answer “unity.”  Ask unity in what, and how won.

This is not a parody.  I wish it were.

An outpost of the Satanic Temple has established its own abortion clinic, which offers a “protective rite” to ward off unwanted feelings about abortion.  As the website declares, “The Satanic Abortion Ritual is a destruction ritual that serves as a protective rite.  Its purpose is to cast off notions of guilt, shame, and mental discomfort that a patient may be experiencing due to choosing to have a legal and medically safe abortion.”

Since one of the purposes of the rite is to “cast off notions of guilt,” it looks like the main thing which is to be “destroyed,” and from which one is to be “protected,” is conscience.

The ritual involves the recitation of several charms.  Before the abortion, the woman is to intone Satanic Tenet III, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” and Satanic Tenet V, “Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world.  One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.”  After the abortion, she is to pronounce the Satanic Personal Affirmation, “By my body, my blood.  By my will, it is done.”

Of course the baby’s body is not part of “one’s body” but only inside it.  So much for Tenet III.  And of course the denial of this biological fact does distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.  So much for Tenet V.  But the Personal Affirmation nails it.  Although repentance is possible after a woman has killed her child, the baby cannot be brought back.  By her will, “it is done.”

The late Richard John Neuhaus remarked, “If you set out to justify the attack on something so primordial, so given, so foundational to human community as a mother's love and responsibility for her child, you have to come up with a new explanation of fundamental reality, a new worldview, and finally a new religion.”  The new religion has been in the works for quite a while.  As the feminist Ginette Paris wrote in the nineties, “Our culture needs new rituals as well as laws to restore abortion to its sacred dimension, which is both terrible and necessary.”  She called it “a sacrament” and “a sacrifice to Artemis,” but we now know who to whom the sacrifice was really offered.

Pro-abortion demonstrators who chant “Hail, Satan,” have been defended on grounds that they aren’t really hailing Satan, but are merely lampooning Christians.  So much for that naïve idea.