The most irritating aspect of the current health care debate is the use of the word reform, as in Health "Reform". Again, the left and its major media mouthpieces have won the rhetorical war. Because the public responds to them, the terms used to characterize a policy may make the difference between acceptance or defeat of a policy. The choice of words can cause public opinion to shift between positive and negative. The left, well aware of this, choose terms tactically. Conservatives seldom do, and often seem not even to realize there is a battle to fight.
Consider that "reform" means connotatively to improve, to make better. But what is involved in the health bills and plans being discussed is the nationalization of health, a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. Hardly an improvement. Judging by what has happened in other countries with nationalized health care, it will mean treatment delays, rationing care, health care distortions, bureaucratic red tape galore, and bureaucrats making life and death medical decisions.
It is not "health care reform". It is health care "takeover" (or the clumsy, but correct, "nationalization"). Not "At stake for the president is getting Democratic factions on board with his plan and convincing Americans of the need for health care reform," but "At stake for the president is getting Democratic factions on board with his nationalization and convincing Americans of the need for an health care government take over."
But I despair. Even Fox has accepted the rhetoric. The left has won the rhetorical war again. "Reform" is set in concrete.
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