Living out the scene in last week's South Park in which the townspeople vote to bury their heads in the sand rather than face the issue head-on, the European Union plans to make Islamic terrorism disappear. Not the actual use of guns, knives, explosions and burning Peugeots in furtherance of terror, of course. Simply the actual words, "Islamic terrorism". And Islamofascism will be going away as well--not al-Qaeda (that's what the continental dormitory has America for)--just the word "Islamofascism".

As Syme once said to Winston, did you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?

(Of course, other religions have had their language impacted by the EU as well, which has never met an edict it didn't like. Last year, the EU announced that Christ's name must be spelled with a lower case-C, err, c, and Jews be capitalized when referring to nationality, but when referring to the religion, spelled with a lower-case "j".)

Update: Jeff Goldstein is absolutely spot-on:

We control words. They should not control us. And when words are controlled by our intent, those who take issue with their own particular misinterpretations of our intent can no longer claim that the fault lies with the utterer—the practical implications of which are that we no longer have to twist ourselves into knots trying to prevent giving offense by self-censoring our criticisms.

This puts the onus of “tolerance” on the listener, who is forced to accept valid criticism as a product of free expression. No one has a right not to be offended. And in fact, in our country, the First Amendment is meant to protect the right to offend, within reason.

By reasserting the locus of meaning linguistically and philosophically with the person responsible for formulating the meaning, we can begin to reassert the essential tenets of classical liberalism, which resist collectivism and wills to power by re-establishing the individual as the focus of liberty.

Going in the other direction—which we’ve been doing for the last nearly 40 years—only leads to the kind of totalitarianism that favors those who wish to control us through a control of our expression.

Another Update: Heh^TM.