'When men cannot change things they change words', is an old, very wise Roman proverb. A glaring sign of corruption is when people change the language. It is the worst form of corruption, because it is far more than just a superficial lie. It changes communication, which is the social glue, and therefore it damages society. It also changes the way we think in a very fundamental way. Changing words is not therefore not cosmetic; it is an evil that goes deep.
Winston Churchill said, 'We build our houses then our houses build us.' The same is true of language. The words we use, the words we choose, alter our thinking. We should therefore take great care with our choice of words. And we should change them only for very good reason. Not for malice, not for vanity, not just for the sake of it.
PC-speak is corruption. It is an evil cancer metastasising through our nation, through our communities, through our families, through our minds. It is a social crime.
....
A recent example of an attempt to change words was in the report of the 'Welfare' Working Group, which wants to us to replace all the welfare benefits with one, to be called the Work-Seeker Benefit. Obviously, those who then fail to find work can be cut off. That ignores the truth that there is 5-10% unemployment, and that therefore there will be a large number of people who will never find work. It also ignores what has pointed out by John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the world's foremost economists, who said that in modern economies unemployment is deliberately factored in as part of the effort to keep inflation under control.
To penalise the people who are the consequence of that policy is wickedness; to change the language to vindicate it is wickedness piled on wickedness.
The victims of the Christchurch earthquake who are being handed wads of money by the government are not being asked if they are looking for work, because a vast amount of employment in Christchurch has been eliminated. The same applies to the whole country, except that the earthquake that has caused the unemployment is man-made, which is even more reason why those who are the victims of it should not be penalised.
We are making two classes of beneficiaries: Christchurch ones and others&emdash;and a policy to tick the first and kick the second.
To the dismay of many New Zealanders there is a word now heard constantly on the streets: CORRUPTION. We are sick of corrupt ends by corrupt means. They must be exposed, railed against and fought—all that corrupts NZ must end. Rotten systems must be replaced by ones that to the best of our devising are rot-proof. We have ways of preventing our houses from rotting. We should do the same for our house of State. Honesty really is the best policy.
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