Sowell’s article that George highlighted provides several current example of socialist Newspeak and their adroitness at being able to “turn reality upside down” by euphemism.

One of the terms Sowell mentioned was “swamp.” As Sowell wrote, Swamps were messy, sometimes smelly, places where mosquitoes bred and sometimes snakes lurked. The left has replaced the word “swamp” with “wetlands,” a word spoken in pious tones usually reserved for sacred things.

It struck me that while socialists rarely describe swamps as “swamps” nowadays, they still make frequent use of a synonym for “swamp” that has an even messier, yukkier connotation. But they use it metaphorically. The word is “quagmire,” and it is used to describe places where tyranny formerly reigned that are now in that unstable state between the old tyranny and emerging freedom. Thus according to them, the two most recently discovered “quagmires,” where mosquitoes sometimes still breed and snakes still sometimes lurk, are Iraq and Afghanistan. Sudan doesn’t garner classification, but then again, many socialists don’t believe in Hell.

Regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps it would behoove American socialists to envision them as “freedom’s wetlands.”