Brave new world

In his novel "1984," George Orwell created the satiric template for the modern totalitarian state, a humorless bureaucracy endlessly changing the very language to disguise its purposes.

In 1948, readers were presumably supposed to laugh -- though even then the humor was dark -- at the exaggerated notion that a "Big Brother" state might eventually adopt such mottoes as "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength."

Yet in Washington today the race to adopt a real-world "Newspeak" proceeds at double time.

President Obama's priority "has been the altering of words and their meanings to the point we need one of those universal translators from the 'Star Trek' films," Investor's Business Daily protested last week.

"We give tax 'cuts' to people who don't pay taxes, spending is 'investing,' wars are no longer wars but rather 'overseas contingency operations,' " the daily complained.

In a memo e-mailed to Pentagon staff members last week, the Defense Department's Office of Security Review said that "This administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror.' Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the enemy attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were not "terrorism" but rather a "man-caused disaster." Such word games are "perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear," she explained.

It "demonstrates" something far more significant than that. After Peal Harbor in 1941, had this gang been in charge, would Americans have been advised to abstain from seeking to retaliate against our Japanese attackers? After all, "disasters" just "happen." Why get upset? Why the finger-pointing?

Instead, our president now apologizes to Muslim extremists that we have in any way offended them and led them to find it necessary to murder our citizens. Our new secretary of state apologizes to the Mexican government that the drug cartels that have long been allowed to thrive there by their own corrupt police and bribe-taking officials are somehow our fault because we have not executed enough American drug users or started to randomly search every American vehicle for smuggled arms.

O brave new world, that has such people in it.