In message <199408231846.NAA08977@zoom.bga.com> Jim choate writes:

You strike me as a person who trusts governments.

Thank you. I am an American who has spent has most of his adult life outside the USA because (a) bureaucratic errors ruined my career prospects, (b) my involvement in the Indochina wars left me sickened by American stupidity and convinced for life of the futility of large-scale government enterprises, (c) [later] certain elements in the Federal Gov't had it in for me (they had me up in front of a grand jury at one point), (d) certain political bureaucrats at other levels of government felt the same way and sued me for millions, and (e) American blindness to the outside world is sometimes very hard to take. I trust the government to extort every penny they can from me and then to waste it on idle bureacrats and in the pursuit of votes. I trust government to be arbitrary and stupid. Need I go on? However, I also understand that government performs certain essential functions. Where I grew up in California, there were still people living who could remember Mexican bandits raiding across the border. And I teach my children that if they are in trouble they should look for a policeman. And they go to school to learn things that they can't or won't at home. But the discussion was about the use of certain words, including "government". There are people on the list who insist on using the word in an abnormal way and then attack those who use it in a normal way. My preference for clean and simple English does not make me a lackey of "the government". -- Jim Dixon