The Need for "Reform"

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

I found a wonderful letter to the New York Times and posted it to my
blog to preserve it for posterity (at
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/03/need-for-reform.html>).  :->

<blockquote>To the Editor:

More than half a century ago, George Orwell warned, in his essay
"Politics and the English Language," against the immorality implicit
in the use, especially by government officials, of intentionally
misleading words. I think of Orwell's essay every time that President
Bush speaks of the need for "reform" of Social Security and tort law.

Orwell's contemporary George Bernard Shaw got it right when he
reputedly retorted to an adversary whom he was debating: "Do not
speak to me, sir, of reform. Things are bad enough as they are!"

JAMES O. FREEDMAN
Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2005

The writer is president emeritus of Dartmouth College and the
University of Iowa.</blockquote>
--
Yoshie

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