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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: "Anal retentive"
In-Reply-To: bjg@wordwrights.ie's message of Wed, 05 Feb 1997 22:04:13 GMT
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Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 22:03:36 GMT
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In article <32f8fb51.12683830@news.eunet.ie> bjg@wordwrights.ie
(Brian J Goggin) writes:

>If I have understood correctly, Hitler led the National Socialists, while both
>Mussolini and Mosley (in Britain) came from socialist parties. I don't know
>what happened in Japan.

And the People's Republic of China is not a republic; the German Democratic
Republic was neither democratic nor a republic.  The Soviet Socialist republics
weren't socialist, either.

Political entities frequently name themselves so as to appeal to some group, or
to make themselves appear innocuous to a group with which they are in philoso-
phical conflict.  What weight you choose to give such namings is up to you; I
prefer to call such groups by their actions.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
