Written by: Beck

I just heard the most astonishing thing on CNN, though unfortunately I can't find a scrap about it online. Doubtless it'll be all over the place inside the next twenty-four hours.

You've heard of the Minutemen perhaps? They're an organization that plans to patrol the US border to try to spot illegal immigrants crossing over from Mexico & report them to the border patrol. They are all volunteers, they are only patrolling a 40 mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border, and their whole point is to draw attention to the magnitude of illegal immigration. You can read more about them here.

Vincente Fox, the President of Mexico, is planning to bring legal action against them. According to the CNN news reader, Fox's objection, and these are the news reader's exact words, is that "It is the Minutemen who are breaking the law, not the illegal immigrants."

Ordinarily, I'd make some quip about how it's mind boggling that someone whose very activities are labeled by the word "illegal" is by definition breaking the law. But that would be too easy. Instead, I'll point out that the state of semantic obfuscation in political discussion has reached such a ludicrous level that people can actually use phrases like, "It isn't illegal aliens that are breaking the law," with a straight face, and no one gives it a second though. To them, a word's meaning is completely divorced from the word itself.

Mind you, this is a disease which afflicts the whole range of the political spectrum, not just one particular side.