A “Devil’s Dictionary” of Washingtonese

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 15 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

Libertarian journalist James Bovard — author of a dozen outstanding and eye-opening books including Lost Rights, The Bush Betrayal, and most recently Attention Deficit Democracy — has done Americans yet another service.

In an editorial for USA Today Bovard put together a short dictionary of “Washingtonese” — the slippery lingo that politicians, bureaucrats and other such nefarious critters use to hide what they really mean.

Or, as Bovard puts it, the government’s “nebulous nomenclature [that] deters citizens from recognizing exactly how well their elected leaders serve them.”

Here’s a sampling:

• Historic — different than last week
• Unprecedented — different than last month
• Emergency — the gift that keeps giving
• Truth — whatever people will swallow
• Legacy — any political boast that survives more than three 24-hour news cycles
• Handout — a government benefit received primarily by the supporters of the other party
• Mandate — whatever a winning politician can get away with
• Honorable — any public figure who has not yet been indicted
• Bill of Rights — (archaic) political invocation popular in 1790s
• Fair play — any process in which politicians or bureaucrats pick winners and losers
• Rule of Law — the latest edicts from a deputy assistant Labor Secretary or deputy assistant HUD Secretary
• Patriotic — any appeal that keeps people paying and obeying
• Waste — federal spending that fails to generate laudatory headlines, votes or campaign contributions
• Freedom — whatever rulers have not yet benevolently prohibited
• Election — when voters are permitted to freely consent to one of the two aspiring despots offered by the major parties
• Cynic — anyone who expresses doubt about the latest bipartisan agreement to gradually eliminate the federal budget deficit over the next 117 years
• Anarchist — anyone who advocates across-the-board spending cuts of more than 3.63%
• Scurrilous — anyone who mentions previous federal failures when the president proposes glorious new programs

For much more Bovardian wit and wisdom, see his USA Today article.