PC TAX: Not what you'd think

New Criterion, May 5, 2007 – Roger Kimball wrote,

Department of Euphemism Abatement: Here is an idea I offer gratis and for nothing to all those socialistically-inclined politicians looking for novel ways to tax people. What I have in mind is a tax on the public utterance of politically correct euphemism. Why not? Great Britain used to tax windows, for heavens sake. Why not euphemism? Like the tax on tobacco, this tax would have the triple advantage that modern bureaucrats look for in their efforts to expropriate your property: it would 1. fill the government's coffers; 2. deprive people of more of their hard-earned dollars, thus increasing their dependence on the state; and 3. reinforce everyone's sense of self-righteousness--though in distinction to the tax on tobacco, a tax on politically correct euphemism would conduce only to one's practice of truthfulness, one's mental as distinct from one's physical well being. Continued...