I enjoyed Neil Lock's article on the mis-use of language to convey collectivist messages, and would like to mention two of my own pet peeves. One is the use of the term "cynical" to describe the attitude of someone who questions the wisdom of a government proposal when the accurate description might be "realistic."

     The other one is the assumption that it is always good to be patriotic. For example, a conservative talk-show host was lambasting a guest's views the other day and then added "but I would never question your patriotism". When arguing the merits of patriotism, I've asked whether those Germans who were unpatriotic to the Third Reich were necessarily bad people, and I usually get back gobbledegook about loving one's country but not one's government, and sometimes some clearer arguments about appreciating such traditions of one's native land as free speech, etc. But I've yet to see a convincing argument that patriotism solves more problems than it causes.