Posted on 05/23/2010 3:20:33 PM PDT by mdittmar
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The term “mental retardation” was formally eliminated from medical and psychological use quite a long time ago. Not only had it been applied to a huge range of conditions with a huge range of causes, but it was also semantically incorrect as applied to most of those. Most people who have what used to be called “mental retardation” are not going to be seeing any improvement beyond the usual age when normal people’s mental capacity peaks. Their mental development is not “retarded”, but rather has come to a permanent halt at a level far below normal. And of course, the frequently used replacement term “developmentally delayed” has exactly the same problem, so it’s actually refreshing to see the government choose a term containing the more accurate “disability”. Normal intellectual capacity is an ability that these people do not have, and in the overwhelming majority of cases/types, will never have. They aren’t retarded/delayed/slow in getting it; they’re simply never going to have it.
This reminds me of Winston Smith’s job in the book, “1984”.
Retards in the Senate would rather make meaningless gestures to appear to be doing something that would make anything better.
Any word/nomenclature that is employed to refer to that particular mental status will eventually become offensive and non-PC....simply because of the essential nature of the condition with which that term becomes associated.
How gay.
Government cannot legislate decency or respect for others. The words “retardation”, “retarded”, and “retard” have a specific meaning, and they should be preserved if for no other reason than public safety.
“There is a retarded man over there, playing with a gun”, would elicit an immediate response by a police officer, who would quickly realize the risk.
“There is a man with an ‘intellectual disability’ over there who is actualizing his educational experience with a projectile impelling mechanical apparatus,” is just a retarded thing to say.
My son has Down Syndrome. He is mentally retarded, but is not a retard.
Downs people are the nicest and happiest folks I know.
Are they taking it personally?
retarded people used to be called “simple”, and “idiots”...retarded IS the nice way to refer to someone who is handycapped mentally.
Boy, I’m glad these folks are taking care of the big problems we face. Maybe next they will tackle the fact that their saviour is bankrupting our country. I guess not, there must be a post office that needs naming.
On an old farm tractor or a Model T one had to retard the throttle to to slow down. Should they have termed it “differentially disable” the throttle? By the time Farmer Joe figured out that instruction, the chicken coop would have been run over and the hens would be out.
What states are those?
Perhaps they can just replace the term “retarded” with the term “member of Congress” - provided that isn’t too insulting to retarded persons.
Oregon is one, Idaho is another. Don’t know specifically about Washington but someone will show up on FR who knows fer sure.
In either of those states, if you’re in a public place and get in an argument with any female and call her a c..t - look out! She can have you arrested.
Some guy in Idaho used the ‘N’ word at his kid’s little league game, and spent 18 months in prison as a result.
So, watch yer mouth in the Pacific Northwest.
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