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The hope of the PC crowd is that since language influences attitude, a change in language will create changed attitudes. Forty years of "socialist brotherhood" did little for the Serbs and Bosnians who slaughtered each other from opposite sides of the "Bridge of Unity" after the Red Army left. But hope springs eternal in the American breast. We wish to create utopia even if it means forcing goodness down everybody's sinful throat! Aside from its false assumptions and historical failures, another problem with the plan to change human nature by changing the language is the very real possibility that the old negative connotations will catch up with the new words. Human emotions may well control language as much as language controls human emotions. A cartoon some years back in The New Yorker showed graffiti on a hospital wall that read, "Johnny has mental health." A rose by any other name can still draw blood.

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