Several years ago, 380 to be exact, John Milton related in his polemic speech to the English Parliament “Areopagitica,” widely considered the primary treatise on freedom of speech and the press ever written, of his visit to an aging Galileo, languishing under house arrest by the Inquisition “for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought.” No one serving in the Colorado General Assembly (as of the time of this writing) is serving under house or any other kind of arrest for contrary thought, but the revelation of “banned words” and the subsequent gaveling down of speakers at the well for using them brought the passage, and much of the rest of Milton’s polemic, to mind.

A great deal has been made, and rightly so, of the “banned words” list distributed to Republican lawmakers ahead of debates on certain controversial issues, in particular those concerning immigration and transgender policy.

I will admit to having to inquire as to the definition of several of the terms related to the transgender debates (such as “deadnaming”), but the words quarantined from the immigration debate — most notably “illegal immigrant” — caught the eye.

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This appears to me an unforced error on the part of the majority. The political utility aside, it begs examination of the question of the use of language — more precisely, the use, abuse and restriction of language and speech — as a political weapon.

It is helpful to first acknowledge some speech and thought should be discouraged. No right, of course, is absolute; the First Amendment does not protect one yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, as the most common aphorism goes. Similarly, we quite properly have long-held cultural and legal prohibitions on speech that is, for instance, racist, or calls for the violent overthrow of government. Much of the “thought” delivered on college campuses which animates the miscreants who are setting up illegal encampments and terrorizing Jewish students ought to be discouraged among responsible academic leaders. One recalls the debates regarding the National Education Association’s subsidization of pornography, and Tipper Gore’s crusade against explicit rock lyrics in the 1990s.

Should we demand a higher standard of civility in our public institutions? Yes. And there are taboos against certain types of speech that ought to be maintained. But anything can be abused, and there comes a point where taboos themselves can be taken to such excess they hinder inquiry into important questions.

There is an irony in this, that it has traditionally been the liberals whose latitudinarian definitions of “tolerance” sparked caterwauling about “censorship” when applied to pornography and the like. It is paradoxically the liberals who brought us “political correctness” and insist on torturing the English language for political purposes.

Some of the excessive silliness of political correctness failed to survive for long; I remember, for instance, in college being confronted by first-year students referring to themselves as “freshpersons,” and some of my female classmates insisting on being referred to as “womyn”. But much of what was once considered a merely amusing, if appalling, affectation has become de rigeur.

What this all amounts to is an assault on the precision of the English language. For example, “Illegal alien” is a phrase that describes something very specific — a person originating from another place (an “alien”) who entered this place in a manner other than that prescribed by law (“illegally”). “Illegal immigrant” accurately describes one who comes to this country with the intent of living here (“immigrating”) but again in a manner outside the law. I, for the record, am both a legal alien and a legal immigrant. The terms are specific and demonstrate the precision of the English language, a precision profitable to comprehension. None of the phrases offered as alternatives, such as “undocumented immigrant” or the even more nebulous “newcomer”, adequately reflects the intended meaning.

This is not isolated to the state House, of course. There are those in the justice reform movement, for instance, who are pushing for replacing the term “sex offender” with “people who have committed sex offenses.” Wither we go from there, the mind despairs contemplating.

This is really just an extension of the not-so-gradual degradation of the language in general. Rules are being disregarded to the point where language is becoming an obstacle to understanding. If I read one more official statement in a newspaper of record where the speaker is quoted as saying “I’m gonna” in place of “I’m going to”, I’m going to throw up.

Maybe this is just one more of my get-off-my-lawn columns. Fine. But I will bring it back by ending with the quote from Euripides with which Milton begins his famous treatise:

This is true Liberty when free born men

Having to advise the public may speak free,

Which he who can, and will, deserv’s high praise,

Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;

What can be juster in a State then this?

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.