Saturday, March 07, 2009

Accepting Violence?

I am not much of a Freudian, but I think that good old Sigmund was on to something when he suggested that small slips of the tongue could sometimes reveal the way people think. For example, when British police spokesmen talk to the press about murders, they often use words like “senseless” or “pointless” to describe them. This suggests that they think some murders are sensible or reasonable; and when they proceed to pay tribute to the victim’s endearing qualities, they appear to imply that less endearing people may be killed without the law’s going to equivalent lengths to find the killers.


Read the rest of Theodore Dalrymple here.

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