‘Language as an Assault Weapon’

Adam Carolla predicts that in ten years, we’ll be calling “illegal immigrants” “border heroes.”

Here’s Jim Goad:

A huge quotient of the seemingly endless cultural and ideological wars hinges on how terms are defined. Those who claim authority to declare what words mean are able to shape public thinking like a sculptor molds clay. Although facts—which are what news organizations are supposed to peddle—seem immutable , words are forever in flux. Both “liberal” and “progressive” now mean almost the opposite of what they did a century ago. Such semantic squabbling also leads to absurdities such as how the phrase “colored person” was deemed hateful and replaced with the far more sensitive “person of color.”