On Living in a Novel and DoublePlusGoodSpeak

Yesterday, I got to hear Rita Marker of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide speak. She quoted Smith's Law: "Any act of social engineering is always preceded by verbal engineering." (cf. George Orwell) Mark Shea extends this insight from personal experience:

One of the many patterns I have noticed among people who labor to excuse huge evils is that they are incredibly sensitive about minor linguistic points. I can't count how many times I have gotten tearful rebukes from torture defenders because I am so *mean* and actually use words like "torture defender" to describe people who are looking me in the eye and saying that this is not torture. Similarly, people determined to make excuses for pols whose whole career has centered around grotesque justifications for abortion, justifications extending to invocations of Sts. Thomas and Augustine, tend to get oh-so-upset when you employ the mocking phrase "sacrament of abortion" to describe their twisted theology. This tendency to strain at linguistic gnats and swallow moral camels is one of the warning signs I now look for when detecting the presence of evil.