Free Republic

In another land, a long, long time ago, I was a student of languages. It was there that I came across the American left’s obsession with corrupting the language. In my last year in college, I had American Literature taught by a Fullbright exchange professor. I will never forget the moment the poor man – talking to a class of 36, all women as such classes often are – let slip the innocent word “him” to mean an indeterminate gender. He paused, went white, his eyes widened, and he said, “I mean, I mean, he or she.” Meanwhile, the class...

John M. Robinson, the Chief Diversity Officer at the U.S. Department of State, wants America’s diplomats to know that common phrases and idioms like “holding down the fort” are, in fact, deeply racist. Robinson, who also serves as director of the Department’s Office of Civil Rights, used his “Diversity Notes” feature in the July/August issue of the official “State Magazine” to examine the hateful roots of everyday sayings. In one recent public relations kerfuffle at Nike, Inc., he wrote, the company torpedoed a sneaker called the “Black and Tan.” “What a wonderful celebratory gesture and appreciation for Irish culture. Not!”...

Juliet, that Capulet of Verona, said, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Janet, that Napolitano of Washington serving as secretary of homeland security, would say we're dealing with the Rosa genus in the Rosoideae subfamily of the Rosaceae family, part of the Rosales order of the Magnoliopsida class of the Magnoliophyta division in the Plantae kingdom. And if you said, "What the heck is that?," welcome to the club. Miss Napolitano is really beating around the bush in using the euphemism "man-caused disaster" for terrorism. "O, be some...

Another Straight Talk Express by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 12, 2008 The folks at Diversity Inc. have posted an etiquette guide that is sure to be consulted by university human resource offices called “7 Things Never to Say to LGBT Coworkers." For those of you who mercifully don’t have to cover the PC (and we don’t mean personal computer) world of higher education, LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. As it turns out, Ls, Gs, Bs and Ts actually concocted the taboos. In other words, they were devised by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). You...

Illegal entrants crossing through the Tucson Sector this fiscal year are dying at a rate 14 times greater than they did seven years ago - when the U.S. Border Patrol started its concerted effort to save them. In 1998, the agency began the Border Safety Initiative, asking Mexican and Central American nationals not to cross the desert and putting in place its rescue teams in remote areas. At the end of the program's first year, the agency tallied 11 people dead in its Tucson Sector, about three for every 100,000 apprehensions made. Apprehension numbers this fiscal year are at about...