Melancholy, and provocative piece by Michael Wolff in the Guardian reviewing David Goldhill’s book
about the care for his aging father, (previewed in the Atlantic a few years back). Lacking the policy knowledge to assess the arguments, I’m still struck by a point Wolff (who wrote a compelling “You are there” first-person account of the first dot.com melt down) makes that the language we use to describe the problem inevitably constrains the set of solutions we can talk about. What if part of the problem is the very word “insurance”?
From Wolff’s essay:
And Goldhill’s book does something else. It steps outside of the established political debate and lexicon – one of the rare books addressing a major national policy issue that is able to do so in language not already debased by the problem itself.
A Few Reasonable Words 