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Friday, November 21, 2008 12:00 AM

Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive?

Come out of the closet, liberals. Stop using the fashionable euphemism "progressive" and relaunch the old, tarnished L-word.
By Michael Lind

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  • Thursday, November 20, 2008 08:33 PM

    Unfortunately the nomenclature game will not change

    Words are abandoned when they come to mean too much what they mean - everybody has internalized the dictum that defining the terms of the debate controls the outcome. It's too ingrained to stop now.

    Witness the word "handicapped" which displaced "crippled" as a more genteel euphemism. But then "handicapped" came to mean "handicapped" and had to be abandoned in turn for something that didn't, which itself will come to mean the same thing.

    We try to stay a step ahead of reality, but there is no finish line to the race.

    —mikestand Read mikestand's other letters

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