It's hard to escape George Orwell. There's "double-speak" everywhere I look, and I think of Orwell's warning: that if language loses precision, we're on the road to being manipulated by it. It's hard to advance freedom when we lack clarity.
Cases in point:
Cases in point:
I am bored by the Hallmark-card "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice." Everyone loves life, everyone loves choice, right? But this one's about a particular choice- specifically the right to choose to abort an unwanted fetus. Call me pro-abortion, I won't mind.
Let's stop arguing about "Black Lives Matter" vs. "All Lives Matter." The former was meant to oppose the denigration of black lives versus others -- i.e, black lives matter as much as white lives. A counter-punch to police bias. In this context, the otherwise anodyne "all lives matter" seems downright bizarre: does anyone think that cops are biased against whites?
There's the Orwellian fight over how we label terrorism-- extremist, Islamic, Jihadist, whatever. Some argue that if you can't name the problem, you can't fight it. Really? As I write, our administration has bombing missions over Libya. If you review the countries we've recently attacked, they're all in the Mideast, and they all are Muslim majority. Would a different label change that? Hmm, probably not.
There's the Orwellian fight over how we label terrorism-- extremist, Islamic, Jihadist, whatever. Some argue that if you can't name the problem, you can't fight it. Really? As I write, our administration has bombing missions over Libya. If you review the countries we've recently attacked, they're all in the Mideast, and they all are Muslim majority. Would a different label change that? Hmm, probably not.
Freedom, Orwell says, "is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." If there's a ever a time that we needed journalists to be clear and spell out facts, it is now.
