Words, words, words

"Every White House picks its words carefully, using poll-tested, focus-grouped language to frame issues and ideas to advance its goals," writes Peter Baker, without any evidence to support his thesis, in an irony-free NYT "report" on the uses and misuses of words by the powers that be that doesn't once mention George Orwell's doublethink:

Mr. Bush’s team did that assertively [As if GW were any more assertive than anyone else. Again, where's the evidence that President Bush didn't actually believe what he was saying?]. The initial legislation expanding government power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the “U.S.A. Patriot Act.” The warrantless eavesdropping that became so controversial [It didn't just happen. It took Soros-backed BDS sufferers working 24/7 to ram the big lie down the throats of our fellow Amerians these many years] was rebranded [a favorite principle-free term of our power-hungry fellow Americans on the left side of the aisle] the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” The enemy was, for a time, dubbed “Islamofascism,” until that was deemed insensitive to Muslims [And just who were these deemers, and what thuggish pressure from Islamofascist front groups led to their deeming that calling a spade a spade was "insensitive to Muslims"?]

"They may be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, much as Mr. Bush did to Iraq, but it is not a 'surge,'” continues the blithely history-challenged NYT reporter:

They may still be holding people captured on the battlefield at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but they are no longer “enemy combatants.” They may be carrying the fight to Al Qaeda as their predecessors did, but they are no longer waging a “war on terror.”

So if not a war on terror, what then? “Overseas contingency operations.”

And terrorist attacks themselves? “Man-caused disasters."

We've written early and often about doublethink, but it can never be said often enough. Words matter, and the totalitarian instinct, running deep and dark in our human nature, is ever ready to rush in and crush dissent when the campfires of civilization die down. "Overseas contingency operations” and their ilk are meant to deflect attention from what's really going on over there. It's so boring that it makes you nod off, forgetting to tend the fire. Freedom is not free.

Update: Blogging buddy and tea-party partner Amy Kane links with a must-read on the Orwellian nightmare that has enfogged the national debate: "Welcome to Amsoc."

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Let us hope we are waking up in time to save the land of the free.