A recent angry e-mail from a reader said that certain issues should not be determined by "the dictates of the market." With a mere turn of a phrase, he had turned reality upside down.



Decisions by people free to make their mutual accommodations with other free people were called "dictates" while having third parties tell all of them what they could and couldn't do was not.

Verbal coups have long been a specialty of the left. Totalitarian countries on the left have called themselves "people's democracies" and used the egalitarian greeting "comrade" -- even though some comrades had the arbitrary power of life and death over other comrades.

In democratic countries, where public opinion matters, the left has used its verbal talents to change the whole meaning of words and to substitute new words, so that issues would be debated in terms of their redefined vocabulary, instead of the real substance of the issues.

Words which have acquired connotations from the actual experiences of millions of human beings over generations, or even centuries, have been replaced by new words that wipe out those connotations and substitute more fashionable notions of the left.

The word "swamp," for example, has been all but erased from the language. Swamps were messy, sometimes smelly, places where mosquitoes bred and sometimes snakes lurked. The left has replaced the word "swamp" with "wetlands," a word spoken in pious tones usually reserved for sacred things.

The point of this verbal sleight-of-hand is to impose the left's notions of how other people can use their own land. Restrictive laws about "wetlands" have imposed huge costs on farmers and other owners of land that happened to have a certain amount of water on it.

Another word that the left has virtually banished from the language is "bum." Centuries of experience with idlers who refused to work and who hung around on the streets making a nuisance -- and sometimes a menace -- of themselves were erased from our memories as the left verbally transformed those same people into a sacred icon, "the homeless."

As with swamps, what was once messy and smelly was now turned into something we had a duty to protect. It was now our duty to support people who refused to support themselves.

Crimes committed by bums are covered up by the media, by verbally transforming "the homeless" into "transients" or "drifters" whenever they commit crimes. Thus "the homeless" are the only group you never hear of committing any crimes.

More to the point, third parties' notions are imposed by the power of the government to raise our taxes to support people who are raising hell on our streets and in parks where it has often become too dangerous for our children to play.

The left has a whole vocabulary devoted to depicting people who do not meet standards as people who have been denied "access."

Whether it is academic standards, job qualifications or credit requirements, those who do not measure up are said to have been deprived of "opportunity," "rights" or "social justice."

The words games of the left -- from the mantra of "diversity" to the pieties of "compassion" -- are not just games. They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric.

"Rights," for example, have become an all-purpose term used for evading both facts and logic by saying that people have a "right" to whatever the left wants to give them by taking from others.

For centuries, rights were exemptions from government power, as in the Bill of Rights. Now the left has redefined rights as things that can be demanded from the taxpayers, or from private employers or others, on behalf of people who accept no mutual obligations, even for common decency.

At one time, educators tried to teach students to carefully define words and systematically analyze arguments. They said, "We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think."

Today, they are teaching students what to think -- political correctness. Instead of knowledge, students are given "self-esteem," so that they can vent their ignorance with confidence.

Shut yer yap, commie.

You bet; calling someone a commie makes your babble more than an idiot's tirade. Not.

Save the Swamps!

Save the Swamps!

Rush Limbaugh is a JUNKIE.

George W. Bush is a LIAR and an ALCOHOLIC. Maybe Laura Bush should get into alanon.

Ann Coulter is an RICH IDIOT.

Ayn Rand was a NEEDY, PATHETIC, LUSH.

Libertarianism is a COKE ADDICT'S DREAM.

William F. Buckley's wife is a FAG HAG. Maybe, just maybe, his marriage is a lie.

Patrick Buchanan is a RAVING FASCIST RACIST.

Alan Bloom, who ranted on and on about responsibility, is a GAMBLING ADDICT.

Arnold Schwartzenegger is a MIDDLE AGED PERVERT WHO GETS OFF ON GROPING WOMEN. He used steroids, and that's CHEATING.

The MAFIA and TRIADS are the ultimate CAPITALISTS.

I'm still looking for BOB PACKWOOD'S DIARIES because I bet they're as good as CHEAP PORN.

And... Bill Clinton got a GREAT BLOWJOB from a starstruck, but pretty, zaftig BEVERLY HILLS JEWESS. What guy would turn that down? That's right, no guy would.

The ASSHOLES who wrote the PNAC are IMPERIALIST COLONIZERS.

The ASSHOLES who passed USA PATRIOT are helping to create a POLICE STATE, and then call it "freedom."

Michael Moore NEEDS A SHAVE.

I have heard rumors that Donald Rumsfeld's mouth smells like my FRESHLY WIPED ANUS.

http://www.bettybowers.com/laurabush5.html

Delete this Garbage!

This whole thread is a waste of time.

It was former Reagan Era Secretary of Education William Bennett who wrote the Book of Virtues and who was later exposed as a gambling addict.

It was former Reagan Era Secretary of Education William Bennett who wrote the Book of Virtues and who was later exposed as a gambling addict.



What does this have to do with anything? Ted "Swim" Kennedy let a woman drown through cowardly inaction. Jesse Jackson spawned a love child (one we know of) while Kweisi Habbagoombia Mfume also has several bastards under his belt. Clinton was the worst president in U.S. history, a liar, a thief and possibly even a rapist. His ugly wife is a marxist asshole carpetbagging in NY.

....why are my witty observations being deleted?

...what the fuck?

Those comments were the best ones!

I have some more doublespeak for you. This stuff is from the right wing and corporate marketing interests:

"Employers" and "employees" are used instead of the simpler "company" and "worker" to obscure the real relationship.

"Human resources" for "people."

"Marketing" for "sales."

"Job creation" is a nice way to say "businesses hiring." It credits jobs to companies rather than economic forces. (Jobs usually *follow* growth in demand.)

"Colorblind" usually covers for "same old race biases."

"Family" is used to mean "nuclear family" rather than an extended family.

"Homes" for "houses" and "homebuilder" for "land developer."

"Less government" is a euphemism for "welfare cuts."

"Public-private partnering" is a euphemism for "selling away the public trust."

"Deregulation" is a euphemism for "consolidation." It's also a precursor to increased private regulation of public life.

"Outsourcing" for "importing."

"Right to work" for "union busting" and "no wage floor."

I stand corrected about William Bennet. I get him confused with Alan Bloom.

like was said: "..The words games of the left -- from the mantra of "diversity" to the pieties of "compassion" -- are not just games. They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric. "

It might be a way to secure guv money and avoid real work, and likely a sign of weakness and sloth.

'more rational' means full of diaper brown

And I'm squatting over your face and squeezing a loaf into your mouth.

That's good eatin.

the 2nd derricktroll comment isn't mine. but anyways, what passes, undercover, for diversity nowadays, seems to be an unwillingness to face things as they are.

a good read that touches onthis is Hansons article over at the NationalReview(can't remember the name of the article). it's on the front page.

The National Review is a hateful magazine of irrational vitriol. It should be called the Nationalist Review. Not only that, it loses money. That's pretty pathetic for a "capitalist" magazine.

The National Review is a hateful magazine of irrational vitriol.

---I wonder if you've ever read it?

---It's the left that's full of hatred: for America, for capitalism, for Western Civ and for freedom.