{"id":481,"date":"2012-03-22T18:10:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T05:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=481"},"modified":"2012-03-23T07:48:51","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T18:48:51","slug":"overloaded-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"Overloaded vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=480\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-480\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-480\" title=\"Vulnerable\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Vulnerable-292x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"292\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Vulnerable-292x300.jpg 292w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Vulnerable.jpg 417w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 292px) 100vw, 292px\" \/><\/a>I remember \u2013 as a small boy \u2013 reading a newspaper account of a Member of Parliament in which he was described as a <em>statesman<\/em>.\u00a0 \u2018What,\u2019 I asked my father, \u2018is the difference between a statesman and a politician?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>My father thought about it for a moment or two and then said: \u2018I suppose a statesman is just a politician of whom the newspaper\u2019s editor approves.\u2019\u00a0 (This was back in those dim distant days of dark ink on paper.)<\/p>\n<p>The dictionary definition of statesman is something like \u2018a person skilled in the affairs of State; a distinguished and capable politician\u2019.\u00a0 As I discovered, it\u2019s one of those words that is always positive.\u00a0 There are no devious, scurrilous, or incompetent statesmen.\u00a0 If they are devious, scurrilous, or incompetent, they are politicians.\u00a0 Or worse.<\/p>\n<p>A little later in life, I discovered that the word <em>community<\/em> is also always positive; while <em>establishment<\/em> is (almost) always negative.\u00a0 <em>Fringe<\/em> is at best suspect.\u00a0 And more often than not it\u2019s dangerously loony.<\/p>\n<p>But perhaps the number one loaded word over the past few years has been <em>vulnerable<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The dictionary definition of vulnerable is something like \u2018in danger of being wounded or harmed\u2019.\u00a0 But these days it has come to signal that any criticism of a particular idea or policy is out of bounds to all right-thinking people.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018This policy is designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society,\u2019 the politician declares.\u00a0 And, by using the word vulnerable, the politician has signalled that, far from being a legitimate challenge to the policy, any dissenting voice will be regarded as a dastardly desire to wound and harm.<\/p>\n<p>I think it\u2019s high time we stopped using vulnerable simply to protect vulnerable arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I remember \u2013 as a small boy \u2013 reading a newspaper account of a Member of Parliament in which he was described as a statesman.\u00a0 \u2018What,\u2019 I asked my father, \u2018is the difference between a statesman and a politician?\u2019 My &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=481\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}