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        • About Us
        • Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University works to enhance public understanding of the most important issues relating to faith, family, and freedom.

        • Staff & Fellows
        • Meet our team of public policy professionals and issue experts, working to uphold faith, family, and freedom as the keys to America’s future.

        • Programs
        • We offer a series of programs designed to support civil discourse by bringing forward clear and thoughtful ideas from our state and nation’s thought leaders.

  • Publications
        • Centennial Review
        • Each quarter in Centennial Review, we publish essays on the fundamentals of a free and just society, adapted from speeches given by leading voices at our think tank or in the CCU community. Read this month’s Centennial Review to find out what we’re discussing.

        • Latest Reviews

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        • As Colorado Christian University’s think tank, we draw on the expertise of CCU Faculty, Centennial Institute Fellows, and other skilled policy analysts to provide background and recommendations on current issues facing policymakers in Colorado and the nation.

        • New Policy Briefs

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        • American Marxism Book Review
        • America, Critical Theory, and Social Crisis
        • 1776 Blog
        • Read the latest writings and analyses from Centennial Institute staff and fellows on important state and national issues.

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        • Western Conservative Summit
        • The Western Conservative Summit (WCS) has become the largest gathering of conservatives in the Western United States and the signature event of the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. Read More

        • Issue Forums
        • Our monthly Issue Forums offer the opportunity for some of the top thought leaders to CCU’s campus to speak on the major issues facing our state and nation.Read more.

        • Young Christian Conservatives Leadership Conference
        • The Young Christian Conservatives Leadership Conference offers students, ages 16-20, the unique opportunity to be exposed to the nation’s most-pressing issues and learn how to impact the culture in support of Faith, Family, and Freedom. Read more.

  • Media
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        • The Centennial Institute’s staff and fellows actively speak into the issues of the day. Learn about our latest announcements and projects here.

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        • The Centennial Institute speaks into major issues through podcast interviews with some of the top thought leaders in the state and nation.

        • Videos
        • The Centennial Institute regularly posts videos on our YouTube channel. Watch our live stream or catch up on videos of past events here.

  • Summit

How Left gets its way with language

  • By Jim Ritchie

“Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration had no choice but to order the shutdown of the prison at Guantanamo because ‘the name itself is a condemnation’ of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy,” said a news item this week. Okay, let’s think about this.

Here we have a high official supinely conceding that the Left’s poisoning tactics can fatally stigmatize something, anything, they happen to hate — anything the Left and its slavish media decide to subject to years of constant battering. That poisoning itself now becomes the reason driving US policy.

Isn’t this a little circular? Why does the thing-named (fill-in-the-blank) have to go? Simply because the Left’s stigmatizing and vicious poisoning campaign has been so propagandistically powerful that the very name Guantanamo (or George Bush or Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney) has been damned and demonized into a self-evident “condemnation.”

In other words, this admission of the resulting condemnation-effect caused by a hammering hate campaign by the Media and the Left is now being used by Gates, our nation’s Secretary of Defense, as the basis for the implementation of a national policy!

By the same token, any Obama spokesman can announce that the very names, Bush or Palin or Cheney or Guantanamo, are sufficient reasons in themselves for those named persons or places or things TO BE CONDEMNED.

This spin-effect originated with Hilter, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, Fidel, and Chavez. But now we see it being openly expressed by the executive branch as a sufficient basis for supporting a national policy—all other rational arguments made from reason MUST BOW AT THE HIP.

The Left is masterful at getting its way with language, self-validating trigger words to engender positive or negative emotions and resultant mindless compliance by the target audience. Here is a vivid example on the negative side.

For Media Inquiries:
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Centennial in the News

The Priceless Gift Marco Rubio Just Gave to the Next Generation of Americans, by Greg Schaller, Centennial Institute Director
Tocqueville’s Warning for the New Right, by Greg Schaller, Centennial Institute Director
The Slippery Constitutionality of Open Primaries, by Rob Natelson, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence
A Constitution Day Roadmap For The Supreme Court And How To End The Administrative State, by Rob Natelson, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence
The Conservative Movement Needs a Reckoning, Not a Revolution, by Greg Schaller, Centennial Institute Director
When Western Civilization Forgets Honor, by Greg Schaller, Centennial Institute Director
This Wasn’t About Conversion Therapy – It Was About Free Speech, by Dr. Mark Mayfield and Dr. Megan Cannedy, Centennial Institute Faculty Fellows
America’s 250th Anniversary Is The Perfect Time To Resurrect Our Slain Statues, by Greg Schaller, Centennial Institute Director
War In The Land Of Jesus Shows Us Why Easter Matters, by Dr. David Murphy, Centennial Institute Faculty Fellow
Pelosi Isn’t Alone – Congress is a Trading Floor, by Jaimie Erker, Centennial Institute Director of Communications

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