A POLITICAL CIVIL WAR: Left v. Lefter.

Somewhat related: The first paragraph of the above post caught my eye, because it highlights a favorite gripe of mine.

I like to say that half of the problems with the world today are linguistic, specifically, softheaded thinking follows soft language. Back when we referred to “the jungle,” it was something we wanted to cut down, but now it is the rain forest, and we can’t touch it. No one much cared about trash when we took it to “the dump,” but now it is called the landfill, so we have to sort our trash like we sort our whites and clothing of color for the washing machine.

I don't agree that the problems are linguistic; they're a result of Victor Davis Hanson's progressive hubris. When I was (much) younger and it was called a 'dump', the poor were allowed to scavenge freely to find discards that were still useful at some level, or could be taken apart, rebuilt, or resold for scrap - in other words, made economically useful. Now it's a landfill, and the poor must be kept out, lest they disprove the progressives' bigoted assumption of their inferiority.