Free Republic

In her book Statecraft, the late, great British prime minister Margaret Thatcher wrote: “Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited.” The Iron Lady was absolutely right, yet again. America’s Democratic Left craftily swaps the words associated with its policies. As public opinion or the facts start to escape them, presto! Their speeches, articles, and TV appearances employ new language. Leftists leave inconvenient lingo behind, like a snake’s abandoned skin languishing between desert rocks. Inexplicably, though, the Republican Right usually adopts the Left’s new...

Abortion is not to be spoken of, only done. In Philadelphia, at a human abattoir on Lancaster Avenue, is where it ends, not where it starts. It starts with the perversion of language. It starts when the icons of a dissipated culture reduce a baby to a “fetus.” From there, Yeats’s blood-dimmed tide rolls rapidly in. Before long, a baby is not a person but a punishment, as President Barack Obama framed the matter in his familiar off-the-cuff iciness. Of course, to describe newborn children in their boundless possibilities and wonder would be to acknowledge, foremost, their humanity. That is...