Posted on 03/11/2003 1:52:06 PM PST by madfly
The "use of derogatory word terms, such as 'illegal aliens' ... etc. not to be used in future articles," leads the printed list of "demands" presented to the Review-Journal last June 4 by Fernando Romero, a longtime agitator and 54-year-old executive for The Mirage, who categorically denies any "undocumented workers" are employed in the Las Vegas hotel industry.
Freelance education columnist Ken Ward's accurate Feb. 13, 2002, report on a 16-week tax-funded "Parent Leadership Training workshop" at the school district was "accusatory, sarcastic, humiliating, condescending and insulting," Mr. Romero and his cohorts wrote in that list of demands. Why? Because the columnist "accused the program of having as its pupils 'Spanish-speaking illegal aliens.' " Which, of course, it did. Our visitors then objected in writing that Mr. Ward "indicts the participants of this programs as `lawbreakers' when he accuses the school district of `pandering to lawbreakers.' "
But here's the thing: Illegal aliens are "lawbreakers." Illegal aliens break the law every day they stay here without going down to the local INS office to turn themselves in.
And as we established when we started this discussion back on Jan. 5, this kind of tyrannical ear-covering has even reached the point where Michigan housewife Janice Barton can be jailed for expressing the political opinion that, "I wish these damned Spics would learn to speak English."
No, Ms. Barton did not use pretty euphemisms. But if you want to get something changed, to bring people to an awareness of a desperate but well-camouflaged danger, sometimes you have to invoke and stir up your listeners to an emotional response. When folks shrug and walk away at the mention of "progressive social redistribution policies," perhaps it's time to call them what they really are -- blood-stained communism, the same policies once effected atop the bloated, crunching corpses of a million dead kulaks and their wives and children -- no matter how uncomfortable it makes your "compassionate, progressive" listeners feel.
How can the truth ever be derived from a debate in which plain facts cannot be set forth plainly?
For make no mistake, this campaign to impose gentle euphemisms is meant to do much more than merely deflect attention from the facts and put the fact-bringer on the defensive (though that would be bad enough). Quite simply, once we have stopped referring to bums and hobos as bums and hobos, and agreed to call them the "residentially deprived," we have also been co-opted out of saying the time has come to stop giving handouts to the able-bodied among them; that they can find productive work or else go bobbing for Budweisers elsewhere.
You cannot run "the residentially deprived" out of the parks and public libraries where they have been peeing on the carpet and frightening the children, because you have just acknowledged through word choice that they are obviously a group of victims of an evil economic system who have some entitlement to a share of the wealth of those who have caused their current misfortune by embracing "dog-eat-dog capitalism."
Likewise, in the end, "undocumented worker" is not merely another way of saying "illegal alien." And our table-pounding and supposedly "outraged" critics know this, make no mistake. They know that once they have won the battle of the euphemisms, the rest of their crime-coddling agenda will fall neatly into place.
Words are my tools, like a woodworker's chisels, planes and drills. It might be tempting to say, "What the heck, deprive me of one or two. I'll still have plenty ... though from time to time I might not have precisely the right one for the job."
But then I would have conceded your right to come back and take away a dozen more next month, till eventually I'd have nothing left to write about but puppy dogs, and cinnamon buns, and the first robin of spring.
As Felix Frankfurter noted in Baumgartner v. United States, "One of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures -- and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation."
"In no previous wave of immigration did immigrants have such a powerful upper hand over the native-born population, the very people who permit immigrants to come into their country," comments columnist Paul Craig Roberts. "Today it is native-born citizens who receive hostile treatment."
"If there were a modern Spanish Inquisition in America today, it wouldn't be Bob Jones rounding up Catholics," adds Ann Coulter on page 196 of her new book, "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right." Rather, "It would be liberals rounding up right-wingers and putting them on trial for hate crimes. The liberal Torquemadas would be smug and angry and self-righteous. And when they were done, they would proudly announce they had finally banished intolerance."
And banned anyone from saying anything unpleasant about them, while they were at it.
LOL...MUD
First used by the noted Greek playwright Hypacroties.
;-)
You're right, lol.
and that would be a "true-ism" :=)
Whoa. This looks vey series.
This could be hugh.
Ah yes, I remember it well. A Roger Corman classic cult movie! Rent the video whenever you get a chance!
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