America sleeps as Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, poised between two possible futures, and being shown dreams — well, nightmares, really — of potential Christmases to come, with a glimpse at our own tombstone.

If you want to peer into one possible future — a future advocated by those who view Europe as a model for the US — one only need read the daily (insane) goings-on being reported in the UK. Today's bit of political-correctness-on-steroids weirdness:

When she ran the ad past a job centre, she was told she couldn't ask for 'reliable' and 'hard-working' applicants because it could be offensive to unreliable people. 'In my 15 years in recruitment I haven't heard anything so ridiculous,' Mrs Mamo said yesterday. 'If the matter wasn't so serious I would be laughing out loud.

'Unfortunately it's extremely alarming. I need people who are hardworking and reliable - and I am pleased to discriminate in that way. If they're not then I really can't use them. The reputation of my business is on the line. 'Even the woman at the jobcentre agreed it was ridiculous but explained it was policy because they could get sued for being dicriminatory against unreliable people.

Once upon a time, "discrimination" was a positive word: quality merchandise was advertised as appealing to "discriminating" buyers — that is, people who had the ability to distinguish between a good product and a pile of trash. Or so the appeal went, anyway. During the civil rights struggle, the problem ("bigotry", actually, or "prejudice" — meaning to "judge before") was also called "racial discrimination" — a fair term, since what mattered (e.g. one's fitness for a job) was being ignored in favor of that which didn't (skin tone).

Now, people simply reflexively jump whenever the word "discrimination" is used. Yes, indeed, the woman above hopes to "discriminate" between people who would work hard and those who wouldn't. That must be evil, right? She's drawing distinctions, and treating applications as though they might not all be equal. Well, of course. That's what sane employers do.

This once-helpful word is used like a truncheon even in the US. People opposing same sex marriage are demonized because they "discriminate" based on the gender-parity of the two potential "parents" which might result from the union. And indeed, they do. But, as in the example above, the substance of the debate is thus hidden: How did society end up enshrining committed male/female unions with the word "marriage"? What societal benefits did this form of union confer, that it warranted a special word, and special protections, that others didn't? Where is the evidence that forcibly undoing that ancient distinction will be generally helpful to society, rather than harmful?

And didn't we come out of a huge financial crisis which was caused, at least in part, by a desire to stop lenders from "discriminating" between those who were most likely to be able to afford a particular mortgage, and those who couldn't? Weren't we trying to get banks to treat both kinds of applicants equally?

The example above demonstrates that, at least among the PC crowd, the word "discrimination" (like "tolerance", another helpful word, corrupted) can indeed act as a powerful thought-stopper. I hope this story gets around — shining a light on this absurdity will hopefully make people stop and think a bit more the next time they hear "discrimination" thrown around.