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.
Maturity sees world’s ugliness with more melancholy than anger
Forces shaping America reward acting like angry sixth graders
Unless you’re suicidal, an armed march on D.C. is a very bad idea
Nature struggles to keep alive
How are we supposed to tell the illegal bribes from the legal ones
Is ‘majority rule’ moral even when the majority don’t want freedom?
Fear of intimacy causes confused people to run from love they need
Proving the obvious: Study shows civilian war deaths create enemies
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