Pirates and Emperors, Old and New

Do words mean what they say? Lawyers sometimes argued they didn't, especially when awkward facts stymied their clients. Then legal doctrine said they meant what they were ordinarily taken to mean. Lewis Carroll's Alice had them mean whatever she wanted them to. Chomsky fully documents the dark thought that just as surely as someone dreams us a chamber of horrors, someone else puts it into actual practice. In George Orwell's 1984, black was white, war was peace and historical facts to the contrary disappeared down convenient "memory holes."

(excerpt from the review of Andrew I. Killgore, President of the American Educational Trust)