David Harsanyi:
Human beings have been using euphemisms ever since Adam first “knew” Eve. In politics especially, obfuscating and twisting the meaning of words has been going on forever. But today’s debates aren’t just littered with rhetorical distortions; in some ways, many of Democrats’ most potent arguments are built on corrupt language.
One word that’s really getting a workout this cycle is “loophole.” Basically, all of life is a giant loophole until Democrats come up with a way to regulate or tax it. In its economic usage, “loophole” — probably more of a dysphemism — creates the false impression that people are getting away with breaking the law. It’s a way to skip the entire debate portion of the conversation and get right to the accusation.
So when Hillary Clinton promises to close the loophole of corporate inversion, what she means to say is that Democrats disapprove of this completely legal thing that corporations do to shield their money from the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world. Loopholes are like giveaways, money that D.C. has yet to double and triple tax.
It’s one thing for Democrats to try and set the parameters of a debate before the debate is even begun, but it’s quite another to watch the press participate.
Here’s CNN: “Clinton to push closing corporate tax loopholes.” Here’s The Hill: “Obama calls for Congress to close corporate tax loopholes.” Here’s how Halimah Abdullah and the Associated Press reported the issue on NBC: “President Obama on Tuesday criticized loopholes that help protect offshore tax havens and U.S. companies that move abroad for lower tax rates.”
But Bernie Sanders, bless him, just skips the entire game and just comes out with it by Tweeting: “The offshore tax haven network isn’t something that we need to reform or refine. It’s a form of legalized tax fraud that must end.”
“Legalized tax fraud” is a revealing statement about the progressive belief system. For progressives, taxation is moral. So when you fail to pay an imaginary tax that doesn’t exist but Democrats think should, you are by default engaged in fraud. The law has just to catch up with sin.
Take “access,” formerly meaning having the ability to approach, enter, or use. In today’s liberal parlance, when the state doesn’t give you something for free, it’s taking something from you. It’s denying you access.
When there’s a lack of access to birth control, it doesn’t, as the dictionary might lead you to believe, mean that Walgreens and CVS have been dissuaded from selling condoms, or that someone is bolting the door when women attempt to purchase birth control at the local pharmacy. It means that government has not made condoms free for anyone who desires them.
To oppose the latter — whatever you make of the position — is not tantamount to a ban or outlawing. Yet Clinton has accused Cruz of attempting to “ban” contraception. Neither Cruz nor any Republican in office today has ever tried to ban — prohibit, forbid, proscribe, disallow — contraception altogether. This is a fairy tale with a thriving political fan-fiction community.