Orwell, Guns and Filibusters

George Orwell illuminated something important about how bad policy can be both the cause and the effect of sloppy writing. Language, he wrote, "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

I bring this up apropos of the gun-control plan the Senate has been considering. You might think, reading this morning's news, that the Senate had voted on this plan and then "defeated" or "rejected" it. The Hill, for instance,wrote: "It failed by a vote of 54 to 46, with five Democrats voting against it. Only four Republicans supported it." Reading that, you wouldn't suspect that 54 senators actually supported passing the measure in question, which they did. Or that the proposal was actually blocked by a filibuster.