{"id":14205,"date":"2012-03-21T09:10:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T14:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14205"},"modified":"2012-03-21T09:11:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T14:11:02","slug":"euphemisms-like-elevated-temperature-are-usually-a-sign-of-sickness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/euphemisms-like-elevated-temperature-are-usually-a-sign-of-sickness\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Euphemisms, like elevated temperature, are usually a sign of sickness&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/03\/21\/george-jonas-the-orwellian-distance-between-word-and-meaning\/\" target=\"_blank\">George Jonas<\/a> on the redefinition game, as currently being played in the European Union:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The subject was the justice commissioner\u2019s office beginning a 10-week period of \u201cconsultation\u201d with Europe\u2019s publicly listed companies about breaking the \u201cglass ceiling.\u201d That\u2019s the invisible barrier that supposedly keeps women from Big Capital\u2019s boardrooms. Not altogether, of course, but at only 13% not in the volume Ms. Reding thinks right. After 10 weeks, Europe\u2019s companies will either comply \u201cvoluntarily\u201d with Ms. Reding\u2019s idea of the correct percentage, or she will start considering \u201clegislative measures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>After putting discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, ethnicity, etc., beyond the pale, the government introduces programs whose specific &mdash; indeed, only \u2014 aim is to compel discrimination on the very grounds it prohibits. The first casualty is the language; its first symptoms, a rash of euphemisms. Liberal-fascist societies break out in euphemisms faster than you can say \u201caffirmative action.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Doctors of the body politic \u2014 a.k.a. writers \u2014 react to euphemisms as medical doctors react to fever. Language strives for accuracy; it has a built-in bias for calling a spade a spade, so hearing something called something else shows up as a tick on the diagnostic chart. Euphemisms, like elevated temperature, are usually a sign of sickness.<\/p>\n<p>This is Stage One. In Stage Two the interventionist state abandons all, or at least some pretense, and admits to doing what it\u2019s doing. It\u2019s feeling strong enough to feel its oats.<\/p>\n<p>The EU is now a Stage Two tyranny. It still has lots of room to grow before it becomes a monster-state, but it has started coming clean.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Jonas on the redefinition game, as currently being played in the European Union: The subject was the justice commissioner\u2019s office beginning a 10-week period of \u201cconsultation\u201d with Europe\u2019s publicly listed companies about breaking the \u201cglass ceiling.\u201d That\u2019s the invisible barrier that supposedly keeps women from Big Capital\u2019s boardrooms. Not altogether, of course, but at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,62,84,10],"tags":[409,337,400,43],"class_list":["post-14205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-europe","category-government","category-liberty","tag-corporations","tag-eu","tag-language","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3H7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14207,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14205\/revisions\/14207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}