Jinn of Current Events

I always make a point of using the correct term to identify various tyrants across the world, such as the Butchers of Beijing, Chief Terrorist Arafat, or Comrade Dictator Gorbatchev. It is essential to keep a clear separation in one's mind and speech between peaceful, elected representatives of the people and blood-thirsty beasts.

Claudia Rosett (WSJ) on the dishonest use of words in the diplomatic world: President or Prime Minister. These titles, customary and seemingly harmless, we unthinkingly accept from anyone who occupies the top slot of government in a sovereign nation. It's also standard newspaper style. But while in free nations such titles connote democratic leadership, in unfree nations they denote nothing of the kind. It would be a useful check on our more deferential instincts were we to use titles tied less to custom than to accuracy. For example: Taiwan has a president, England has a prime minister. Egypt has a dictator, Libya has a tyrant. Greeting some of the world's worst thugs as Mr. Dictator, or Honorable Despot, might sound peculiar, but it might also help keep the realities in view.
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Roadmap."Minefield" is more like it. This has been another stellar example of the dangers of bad metaphor. A roadmap shows the way across existing terrain; follow it, and you will get there. In this case, the terrain did not exist, the "peace process," as usual, went right off a cliff, and until there are Palestinian authorities who execute terrorists instead of engendering them, no amount of cartography can paper over the basic truth that this is a war and it won't end until Yasser Arafat and his terrorist ranks are one way or another gone from the scene. 

Will California soon have a governor who understands that government intervention and taxation are destroyers of wealth and obstacles to progress? Arnold Schwarzenegger: when the heavy fist of government becomes too overbearing and intrusive, it stifles the unlimited wealth creation process of a free people operating under a free enterprise system. And that is the essence of the economic and fiscal crisis that confronts the state of California today.