UPDATE: Ill Fares The Land

Mr. Tony Judt has passed away at an entirely too young age, he will be sorely missed.

In his book he talks about using new words to have discussions - since the old ones have been demonized and their meanings changed.

I like the method of Melissa Harris-Lacewell. An example of her doing this was recently on the Rachel Maddow Show. The discussion was around women’s reproductive rights and the tea party's various radical positions. Melissa never used the “a” word, instead she spoke of 'termination of a problem pregnancy'. By avoiding the “a” word – she also allows us to actually hear her arguments instead of jumping to the normal knee-jerk framing we ALL have around that word.

We need to replace a lot of other words like that: liberal, socialism, etc with words like “people centered” and “good of the community” and so on.

Gotta start with each one of us individually – so maybe make a pledge not to use the “a” word anymore, or the ‘L” word, or the “s” word…