Burke (again)

As I first read this selection, I found myself wondering why exactly I was reading it.  Having spent so much time looking at the world of diffe[a]rence a letter makes, it seemed odd to read something about the oral rhetoric and not the written.  I think it can go without saying that Hitler was one of the most persuasive orators, for though some brute force was used, most of it appears to have come from his skill, alone.  Also, as I read Burke's piece, I found myself attempting to draw parallels between this and other pieces we have previously read.

When Burke states that "each man may get there in his own way, but it must be the one unifying center of reference for all" (192), I was reminded of Locke's argument on the imperfection of words.  The problem and discrepancies of language stem from the fact that not everyone has the same associations for a word or phrase, often leading to communicative problems or problems in understanding or creating a universal meaning.  To me, this also is indicative to the problems with mass political movements.  Hitler's "unifying center" may have been his hatred of the Jew (or what he labeled the Jew's inferiority), however, there must have been some people who went along with it out of fear.  These individuals never really held the same unifying center, but rather, their own subculture, one that would act as a fray after Hitler's death and lead to the breakdown of the larger fascist movement.  I think language/perfection vs. imperfection of words acts in much the same fashion.  People who hold a word to mean a certain thing and associate it with a certain amount of "baggage" have one unifying center of the word, etc.  However, the problem with language is that every person has different environmental/social influences that also attribute to their understanding of a word, so that no group is every large enough to create a persuasive unifying center.  The government, on the other hand, is the only collective large enough to implement a "standard" in language, and certain words do hold the same meaning for a large majority of the people because of its implementation by the government; we all are told to associate a word with a certain list of characteristics/meanings. 

To me, that's where the problem of any movement or language truly lies--in the individual.  Burke mentions that "the Strong Man's 'aloneness' is presented as a public attribute, in terms of tactics for the struggle against the Party's dismemberment" (210).  However, this idea is a facade, enabling the individual to feeling powerful when in reality they are apart of the herd mentality that is necessary to have a following as large as the fascist movement, or the acceptance of a definition of a word.  This may be critical, but I think every writer/reader/analyzer can be made to feel powerful or "alone" in their way of thinking, yet this only creates a larger public following, one that is as much a collective as it claims not to be.  The imperfection of language arises from the internal struggle of the reader to be both an individual with his/her own word associations and also a part of the collective readership that finds meaning in certain words/passages.  I am not certain if there really is a happy medium or if the reader must merely subconsciously surrender to one side.