Talk:Doublespeak

Examples may need review

I think some of the examples of Doublespeak should be reviewed for correctness. For example, characterizing "handouts" as doublespeak because payments to the military are not also referred to as handouts is not apropos. When military spending is for useless armaments or political purposes other than conducting warfare, then it is indeed referred to as handouts or "pork". Regular military spending cannot be considered equivalent to entitlement spending because the money is normally spent to buy something, either hardware or service by personnel, whereas entitlement spending does not come with an expectation of getting anything in return, or at least anything of equal value. In other words, military spending is a trade of value, but entitlement spending is a gift, hence the word "handout".

In general, some of the other examples given are either weak or simply wrong for similar reasons. In fact, there is almost an ironic politics to some of the examples. In other words, Chomsky's complaint about the use of the word handouts could almost be considered to be doublespeak itself. Or maybe that was the author's intention?