The Politics of Confusion

American Thinker 

Every functioning society requires two pillars that support both intellectual progress and political stability: standards and language. Standards allow us to measure performance, competence, and improvement. Language allows us to think clearly and communicate meaningfully with one another. When either of these deteriorates, confusion follows. When both deteriorate at the same time, the consequences extend far beyond the classroom.

Over the past several decades, measurable standards in American education have steadily declined. National assessments show that reading proficiency among students has stagnated or fallen. Mathematics scores have declined at every level. At many universities, remedial courses now teach material that previous generations mastered in high school -- or even earlier. Yet even as performance falls, grades themselves have risen, creating the strange spectacle of a system in which achievement declines while evaluation improves. When standards are lowered, the false impression of success is more easily declared.

In earlier eras, grades were meant to reflect mastery of a subject. Today they often function more like participation trophies. The result is that a “B” today may represent a level of understanding that once earned a “C” or worse. Such inflation creates the comforting illusion of progress while quietly eroding the meaning of academic evaluation. This decline of standards goes beyond grades, increasingly extending to language itself.

Words once had relatively stable meanings that allowed people to communicate ideas clearly. When someone used a word like “racism,” for example, it traditionally referred to the belief that one race was inherently superior to another. That definition allowed the concept to be widely understood and widely condemned.

In recent years, however, the word has been redefined in ways that detach it from individual belief and attach it instead to abstract systems of power. Under some modern definitions, racism is said to require institutional authority, meaning that individuals in certain groups cannot be racist by definition. Regardless of whether one agrees with that interpretation, the effect is unmistakable: the same word now carries fundamentally different meanings depending on who is using it.

Communication becomes difficult when people are not even using the same dictionary. The definition of racism intended by one man is not necessarily that understood by another man.

The same pattern appears in discussions of gender. For centuries, the terms “male” and “female” referred to biological categories rooted in reproductive biology. Today those terms are often treated as social constructs separate from biological sex, with language expanding to include dozens of gender identities. Again, the issue here is not merely one of agreement or disagreement with new theories. The deeper issue is the growing instability of language itself. When definitions become fluid, communication becomes muddled. Without accurate communication, the ability to reason becomes near impossible.

Clear thinking depends on stable concepts. If the meaning of words shifts depending on political preference or ideological fashion, arguments can be won not by evidence but by redefining the terms of debate. This creates a peculiar form of intellectual fog in which disagreements persist not because the evidence is unclear, but because the language itself has lost precision.

In practical terms, this leads to conversations in which participants appear to be debating the same topic while actually discussing entirely different concepts. Such confusion has consequences beyond academic seminars or social media arguments. It affects the democratic process itself.

Democracy depends upon the ability of citizens to evaluate policies, understand arguments, and hold leaders accountable. This requires both educational competence and linguistic clarity. If large numbers of citizens struggle with reading comprehension, their ability to evaluate complex policy proposals diminishes. If political language becomes deliberately ambiguous, voters will likely be confused about what policies actually mean.

In other words, declining standards in education weaken the capacity for informed judgment, while declining standards in language obscure the very issues that require judgment. These two trends reinforce one another.

A population with weaker reading skills is more vulnerable to slogans, emotional appeals, and simplistic narratives. At the same time, political actors who benefit from ambiguity have incentives to blur definitions further. Words like “equity,” “justice,” or “democracy” can be stretched to mean almost anything -- and therefore nothing in particular. When language becomes elastic, accountability becomes elusive.

Consider how political debates are often framed today. Policies are rarely described in terms of their trade-offs or costs. Instead, they are packaged under morally appealing labels. A policy becomes “anti-racist,” “pro-democracy,” or “protective.” Those who question it may then be portrayed as opposing the virtue embedded in the label itself. This rhetorical maneuver becomes far easier when words have lost precise definitions.

If “racism,” for example, can mean anything from explicit racial hatred to statistical disparities between groups, then accusations of racism can be deployed with extraordinary flexibility. Similarly, if “democracy” is defined simply as any policy outcome one favors, then opponents of that policy can be portrayed as enemies of democracy itself.

A functioning democracy requires disagreement. Citizens must be able to challenge policies without being accused of moral treason. But when language becomes a weapon rather than a tool for understanding, debate becomes polarized and tribal.

A society that abandons objective measures of performance inevitably struggles to distinguish competence from mediocrity. If educational credentials no longer reliably signal knowledge or ability, institutions may begin substituting other criteria -- political loyalty, ideological conformity, or demographic characteristics.

None of this suggests that standards should remain frozen forever or that language can never evolve. Languages have always changed over time, and educational methods must adapt to new circumstances. But change that increases clarity is very different from change that promotes confusion.

Lowering standards to avoid uncomfortable outcomes does not eliminate those outcomes. It only hides them. Similarly, redefining words to win arguments does not resolve disagreements. It simply makes those disagreements harder to understand.

Democracy depends upon citizens who can read critically, think logically, and communicate clearly. It depends upon institutions that reward competence rather than sentiment. And it depends upon a shared language in which words carry meanings stable enough to permit genuine debate. When educational standards decline and linguistic precision erodes, those foundations weaken.

The danger goes far beyond academic confusion. The danger is a public discourse in which slogans substitute for clarity and evidence is replaced by assertion. When that happens, the democratic process becomes less a marketplace of ideas and more a contest of narratives -- where the side most skilled at manipulating language gains advantage over the side most grounded in reality.