The political left has this uncanny knack of renaming -- rebranding is the current nom de jour -- issues they hold so dear.
The latest salvo came this week during the committee debate on immigration reform.
With great hubris, Democrats warned Republicans against using the term "illegal aliens."
We're told the appropriate terminology is "undocumented migrants."
Even though the use of illegal aliens most correctly describes those who flood through our porous borders on an hourly basis, it seems the American public has a decidedly negative view of illegal aliens.
Thus, let's make the problem go away by renaming that population as undocumented migrants.
Heck, even liberals themselves have noticed the term "liberal" has a tad of a stench to it among most Americans.
Thus liberals are now progressives.
Presto.
Or how about global warming?
The high priest of the global-warming debate -- Albert Gore -- championed the global-warming industry to the tune of a few hundred million bucks.
But people began noticing not everything was warming. It seems those nasty historic temperatures weren't performing as Gore had told us.
Not to worry.
Presto.
Now the narrative is climate change and every progressive -- nee liberal -- has received the memo. We have rebranded global warming into climate change to better describe any and every fluctuation in weather patterns.
No more tax increases. Nope, it's now revenue enhancements.
And is there any iota of irony that Obama's unilateral, unquestioned, drone-kill-list policy is called courageous leadership but Bush's enhanced interrogation was an impeachable offense?
Presto.
One final note on the language sleight-of-hand:
When the president stepped into hot water with his redistribution of wealth comment to Joe the Plumber, the American public balked at the notion of taking from one's efforts to give to another.
Now we have the goal of "economic equity."
A rose by any other name still stinks.
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