Collateral damage. Extraordinary rendition. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Surge. Undocumented workers. Obamacare. Death panels. Mis-speaking. Freedom fries.

We've actively regressed since McCarthy. The modern political vocabulary is dominated by doublespeak and thought-terminating cliche[1]. Most of the fundamental battle lines in American politics have long since been distilled into meaningless soundbite slogans, devoid of any real semantics.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psycholo...