Very often, coming up with a name for something is the first step toward getting rid of it. It’s hard to reject something when it doesn’t have a name. In fact, we as a modern society have a longstanding habit of rejecting some things maybe we shouldn’t be rejecting, just because someone, somewhere, came up with a name for them. For example, when we reject “discrimination” we reject an entire mode of thinking, not only about people but about things as well; it’s a survival instinct, one that has served the human race capably in the past. Does it really make sense for a restaurant to be forced to hire ugly waitresses, or a trucking company to be forced to hire blind drivers? “Bush Doctrine” is something a lot of people think is within their comprehension, when it really isn’t, and it never was as formalized as a lot of people seem to believe. And then there’s “patriarchy,” “neocon,” “teabagger,” and many others. My very favorite of all time has to be “swift-boating,” which near as I can figure means to damage the campaign of a liberal democrat by telling the truth about what he said or what he did.

We have a lot of things infesting us that seem to hang around from one year to the next, because nobody puts together an organized campaign to make ’em go away. And it isn’t possible to put together such a campaign if these things aren’t named. I thought, without taking the time to actually invent the names, I should start a little list of what they are. Maybe if time allows I’ll add some more items to the list, and then switch over to the right side of my brain and invent some slurs as best I can. Although I got a feeling that when it comes to that, I’d be better off outsourcing that part of the project to someone more creative and talented.

Early in the morning, while the coffee was fresh and before the sun came up, I managed to jot down ten.

1. That branch of feminism that seeks to divide privilege from responsibility, so that all gender disparities having to do with privilege can be ended, but disparities dealing with responsibility can endure indefinitely.
2. That sect of Christianity that seeks to win converts through fear and threats, by linking random disasters to the vengeance of an angry, spurned God.
3. Excessive adoration for a public figure based not on the sensibilities of his ideas, or their likely success, but rather on the uneducated perception that he would be a close and dear friend if only his acquaintance could be made somehow.
4. Pronouncing oneself to be the champion of a debate after having deployed nothing but “zingers.”
5. The mistaken belief that war must be caused by those who show the temerity to acknowledge it is coming, or to respond to its arrival, or to prepare for its arrival, or to enlist for the purpose of responding to it.
6. Making horrible ideas look like possibly-good ideas, by socially stigmatizing their opposites.
7. When an awful idea of yours is put to a test, and fails, behaving as if history began the day after that test; conveniently forgetting about any & all occasions on which the idea has been exposed as a miserable failure.
8. Insisting that secular people like you are just as moral as religious people, and then defining morality according to your own personal likes and dislikes — how else could it be done? — completely missing the irony.
9. The notion held by certain people “at the top” of a structure of money, power or prestige, that people beneath this level should be forced to cope with limits that don’t apply up there. Hypocrisy coupled-up with a sense of elitism.
10. Angry people show off their anger. Say they’re angry because they don’t have stuff. The other people get them whatever it is they want. The angry people stay angry as if they were never given the stuff, even though they were. TIK #52.

My response; my version. He Who Argues With The Dictionaries has His sensibilities, and I have mine.

Funny how some of us are expected to live within constraints and limits, and others are not. Isn’t it?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

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Hat tip to Homchick Report, via Gerard.

Palin haters’ comments follow…

Sarah palins password was 1234, thats easy to hax.

Be funny if he had locked her out.

palin sends a 22 year college nerd to prison – nice one palin…

This sentence is a crime in itself. Palin is a piece of shit.

Hacker? WTF? He guessed the security question, and the question was: where did we get married? Now any one who is a huge Pailin’s supporter would have guessed it, IF they would have any sign of intelligence! Give a guy a break, it’s not he’s fault she is that STUPID!

goddamn jewish lawyers.

So there are still a whole bunch of people out there laboring under the mistaken assumption that Palin used a lame password like “Sarah123” and the kid guessed it. In reality, he reset the password using Yahoo’s flaky security-question scheme. But never let the truth get in the way of a good rant, especially when you’re calling someone stupid.

He sought to change history by derailing the campaign. That was his purpose. By itself that was okay — but when it involved breaking the law, he didn’t even slow down to a gallop. What he was doing was so righteous. In that sense, he deserves a harsh sentence…although, IMO, 20-25 is a bit stiff. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s the very picture of someone who should be sent to jail. Yes, I’d say exactly the same thing if he hacked into Obama’s e-mail.

Hmm…that’s an interesting hypothetical. I wonder what the Palin-bashers would say if the shoe was on the other foot? There’s been an incredible amount of news and speculation about Holy Man’s birthplace, and it’s not at all uncommon for an e-mail system to set up “Where Were You Born?” as a security question. Is Barry such a luminescent deity-like off-this-world intellect that He’d pass on that one, or would He go for it? And then someone figures it out…what do you say then? Stupid Obama, can’t believe he’s got the nuclear codes? Yeah. Sure. Sure ya would.

I hate to say it, but the severe sentence was needed. The whole “I Want To Be Part of This Thing And Change The World” has, over the last two years, just gotten way out of hand. From the comments I’m seeing, I’m doubting that this guy was just a lone voice in the wilderness — I think he was acting on a desire felt by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mistaken young people. Yeah, just hack into this e-mail account! And then I’ll find something incriminating of Sarah Palin’s, and keep her out of anything because she’s so stupid…and then the decisions will be made by super duper smart people and life will be perfect! Yeah! All right…so e-mail hacking isn’t serious enough a crime to stop them, what else would they do?

They’re too young and dumb to understand that soopersmart people are capable of making boneheaded decisions and screwing things up. Which, in my book, means really, really young and inexperienced…the needle on the stupid-meter is pegging the post. People like this just making up their own code of morality as they go along, that’s a situation we don’t need. They do plenty enough damage just by voting.

So says strange-lookin’-woman-with-hyphenated-last-name. If the abortions that took place in ’05 represent the women who wanted them and also were able to afford to have them, then that number is too low.

If the 1.21 million abortions that took place in 2005 (http://www.guttmacher.org/…) represent the number of women who needed abortions (and in my opinion, if a woman decides she needs an abortion, then she does), as well as the many women who chose to terminate pregnancies that they very much wanted but could not afford to carry to term, then that number is too high. The work of reducing the number of abortions, therefore, would entail creating an authentically family-friendly society, where women would have the support they need to raise their families, whatever forms they took. That could include eliminating the family caps in TANF, encouraging unionization of low-wage workers, reforming immigration policies and making vocational and higher education more accessible.

On the other hand, if those 1.21 million abortions represent only the women who could access abortion financially, geographically or otherwise, then that number is too low. Yes, too low. If that’s the case, then what is an appropriate response? How do we best support women and their reproductive health? Do we dare admit that increasing the number of abortions might be not only good for women’s health, but also moral and just?

So if your mother would’ve aborted you if only she could’ve afforded it, but she couldn’t afford it, then you’re not supposed to be here. You are a walking moral aberration. Unless I’m somehow distorting her meaning?

Hat tip to Vital Signs, by way of blogger friend Rick.

Roger L. Simon has reason to think so: The President-Who-Never-Was just bought yet another house in Montecito. A big ‘un. With a big ol’ carbon footprint. Nine bathrooms’ worth.

If, as La Rochefoucauld famously said, “hypocrisy is a sort of homage that vice pays to virtue,” then Al is paying more homage on the environment than all the sinners combined paid to all the medieval Popes for all their perversions, real or imagined.

Well, maybe not quite that much, but Al is not alone and we could go down a long list of rich enviro-phonies who, added up, would easily reverse AGW, assuming you believe it. But I have a different suspicion. Most of them don’t believe it anymore. They won’t admit that, of course. But Lindsey Graham’s withdrawal from the latest iteration of cap-and-trade is just a signal of what’s ahead. Get out while the getting is good. And make sure you get out the side door, if possible.

And there’s a lot more evidence that the chicken-littles are getting out while the getting’s good. RTWT.

Other than Graham’s exeunt, no word on what effect this will have on the upcoming legislation built to bind the rest of us. Our aristocrats, for as long as the rivers have flowed, have always desired a special set of rules for little people and a different set for themselves.

We barnyard animals don’t need milk & apples, they’re for the pigs.