My colleague Tim Lynch has an important new paper out on government “doublespeak” in the war on terror.

Excerpt:

Webster’s New World Dictionary (1998) defines “freedom” as “the state or quality of being free; esp., a) exemption or liberation from the control of some other person or some arbitrary power; liberty; independence.” President Bush has tried to use that word to mean something else. Bush uses the word “freedom” to draw the sharpest possible contrast with “terrorism.” Thus, the president frames the battle against al-Qaeda in terms of the “struggle between freedom and terror.” As author James Bovard has observed: “For Bush, freedom seems to be whatever extends his own political power. Whatever razes any barriers to executive power–that is ‘freedom.’”

One can certainly argue that the al-Qaeda terrorist network represents a dangerous new threat to the American homeland–and that government officials require new powers to combat that threat. But it is doublespeak to use the terms “freedom” and “power” as if they were interchangeable. Who could credibly argue that the repeal of the Bill of Rights would represent the “advancement of freedom?”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 11:52 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.