Passive Verbs, Active Verbs: Words Have Meaning, Unless...

...you're doing a story for NPR, and need to cover for the environmental Luddites.


For decades after World War II, the small town of Oakridge in the southern Cascade mountains of Oregon was a booming lumber town. But by the early 1990s, the lumber industry had collapsed, and Oakridge has struggled ever since, losing families and businesses.

So far, so good. Change happens. Industries come and go. Nobody's making horse buggies in great numbers anymore, for instance. So, we can use a passive form of 'collapse'. Rather like the Spanish reflexive verbs: 'se rompio'--it broke itself.

Then, a couple of paragraphs later, we discover the cause of the collapse!

There were lots of economic factors at play, but the death knell for lumber came in 1990 when the federal government listed the spotted owl as a threatened species and declared much of its habitat in the national forests off-limits to loggers.

The federal government, at the behest of environmental groups like Sierra Club, collapsed the economy of the area. That's what happened! All those people, surrounded by the riches of a forest that could allow them to prosper forever, with sane management, marooned in the name of the Spotted Owl.

The rest of the story talks about a town full of empty storefronts, depopulation, welfare dependency, food banks, and 350 miles of bike trails for visitors to ride. Retirement residences for the well-heeled. And oh-so-chic restaurants for them to dine in. And people on unemployment benefits moving in, because they are too far out of the way for the gubbermint to insist they seek work. And a former logger, now commuting 40 miles each way to do shift work at an ice-cream factory. And...and...and...

The story repeats again and again. The journalists describe this sort of travesty as if it appeared out of nowhere, using the passive verb. The people affected, living in poverty in a sea of wealth, know this is not the case.

OS drives through once-thriving small towns in his beloved South, and the story repeats again and again. Kentucky towns collapsed, because the gubbermint declared war on their way of life--tobacco--and nothing ever showed up to replace it. Tennessee and Alabama towns now dependent on income derived from industrial poultry farming, with periodic raids on the processing plants to clear the Mexicans out. Two hydro dams in Tennessee were stopped dead in their tracks in the past two decades, because the environmentalists found their own local versions of the Spotted Owl. That power is now needed, and the towns that could have benefited (not the least from the flood control) are shells, and poverty is just the normal state of being. But, the hiking trails, fly-fishing, and scenery are lovely. If you have the leisure time and resources to do that sort of thing. The forests are overrun with deer, because not enough people are hunting to control the herd. Check the fishing regulations of some states--enough to keep anyone home.

At least ten years behind schedule, State Route 840 is being completed around Nashville, tying East-West to the South without the terrifying drive through Nashville's snarl. It was held up, because one group decided that they should have the right to claim thousand-year-old Indian burial mounds as sacred, and another group wanted to be certain no exits would ever be built near their tony country estates. The taxpayers had to pay them off, and finally, finally the road is being paved. Just in time for the Great Recession. And who is going to invest into industrial facilities in all that industrial park acreage developed and set aside?

Jobs aren't created, because the gubbermint and their enviro/socialist allies, despite proclamations to the contrary, thinks of the businessman (and woman) as the enemy. At every turn, in every transaction or initiative, the gubbermint has its hand out, via a tax or regulation. Rational investors move production (and operations) overseas. We buy iPhones and other gadgets made by slave labor overseas, and carry them with us while we ride our trail bikes through the virgin forest, near the town full of impoverished descendants of the people who settled the area and made it flourish. The solidly-built houses and buildings of the remaining neighborhoods and Main Streets stand in testimony of what they accomplished, and what is being destroyed.

And, the poverty and cultural malaise quietly grow.

The passive verb is not appropriate to our situation.

This country made some terrible cultural decisions in the 1960s and 1970s, and they have come home to roost upon us. Until we begin to make some healthier decisions, in the active voice, the decline will continue.

OS now rails and works in the hopes that his grandchildren will prosper. It may almost be too late for his children.

Passivity, in any sense of the word, is not an option.