Newspeak Is Here!

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Hot Air:

At the Daily Caller, Jim Treacher notes that even someone on the left such as George Carlin knew that the English Language was being corrupted by political correctness:

Here’s Carlin almost 25 years ago, talking about how the term “shell shock” eventually became “post-traumatic stress disorder.” Note that Carlin gets through several minutes here without cursing. It’s almost as if he knew these words would live on after he died, and he wanted as many people as possible to remember them

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We used to have a “War Department” and a “Secretary of War” too. Now we call it the “Department of Defense”.

But I gotta disagree a little bit with ol’ George. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” is a more expansive condition than “shell shock.” PTSD includes people suffering from symptoms days, weeks, months and years after the traumatic incident(s). Lots of military veterans came home with it. Like Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II:

Murphy was reportedly plagued by insomnia and bouts of depression, related to his military service. He slept with a loaded pistol under his pillow.[133] His first wife, Wanda Hendrix, stated that he once held her at gunpoint.[134] A post-service medical examination on June 17, 1947 revealed symptoms of headaches, vomiting, and nightmares about war. The medical record shows that sleeping pills helped prevent the nightmares.[135] Murphy found a creative stress outlet in the poems he wrote (and often discarded) during the period between the end of his active military duty and the onset of his movie career. His poem “The Crosses Grow on Anzio” appeared in his book To Hell and Back,[136] but was attributed to the fictitiously named Kerrigan.[137] For a time during the mid-1960s, he became dependent on prescribed sleeping pills called Placidyl. When he recognized that he had become addicted to the drug, he locked himself in a motel room where he took himself off the pills, going through withdrawal for a week.[15] Post-traumatic stress levels exacerbated what Murphy himself had admitted was his innate moodiness and explosive personality,[11] and surfaced in episodes that friends and co-workers found alarming.[138]

In an effort to draw attention to the problems of returning Korean War and Vietnam War veterans, Murphy spoke out candidly about his own problems with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),[139] known then and during World War II as “battle fatigue”. He called on the government to give increased consideration and study to the emotional impact that combat experiences have on veterans, and to extend health care benefits to address PTSD and other mental-health problems suffered by returning war veterans.[140][141] On October 13, 1971, U.S. Congressman Olin Teague introduced legislation to name a new veterans hospital in San Antonio after Murphy.[142] The Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital in San Antonio was dedicated in 1973 and is now a part of the South Texas Veterans Health Care System.[143]

After the war, they took Army dogs and rehabilitated them for civilian life. But they turned soldiers into civilians immediately, and let ’em sink or swim.[144]
—Audie Murphy

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Our men and women in uniform risked everything for our nation. Many of them paid the ultimate price. Many more were forever damaged and scarred. We owe them big time.

It’s not a debt we can ever repay, but we can try.

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