When you write a check to the IRS, is that charity? According to UK-based philosopher Alain de Botton, that’s what we should call taxes, because the word “tax” is “colorless, odorless and offensive.” Yes, he’s really serious.
Modern political language seems to be intended to conceal the truth rather than make facts clear. It’s no wonder that nobody can agree about what’s going on when almost everybody is busy redefining words to mean what he wants them to mean — in order to make a point.
For instance, in normal conversation, if you say that someone’s budget has been cut, those words have a specific meaning. The money in the budget is something less than it was before. In politics, though, it can mean something altogether different. A “budget cut” might mean that a budget went up — not down — but that the rate of increase wasn’t as much as had been previously planned.
This language is dishonest, and its intent is to conceal the fact that real overall budgets are almost never cut. Politicians can claim to have cut budgets, even though spending still goes up.
We rarely have wisdom we need ’til it’s too late to avoid mistakes
When people identify with their masters, freedom is hard to accept
Ohio high school shooting shouldn’t be excuse to take more guns away
Life is like flying a plane as you assemble it from a box of parts
She says she’ll always love me, but she didn’t say who she was
Herman Cain’s GOP support causes confusion for Demos’ race narrative
Childhood programming makes it hard to believe I’m ‘good enough’
If there’s something you must do, income and vocation might clash
How do we start over and give ourselves parenting we needed?