'General Prophesies of Doom'

Among other things, Walter Quigley was an amateur lexicographer. If, in his presence, you ever came across a word you did not know, he would say, “Let’s go look in the book and see.” This injunction meant that you needed to go to the big dictionary in the corner of the dining room and look up the word. He kept lists of unusual words for family members to learn to spell.

He also clipped the following list from the Congressional Record in 1950. Democratic Rep. Eugene O’Sullivan of Nebraska submitted this list of “scare words” and phrases, along with their sources, to point out the unhinged descriptions that Republicans directed at Democratic ideas. O’Sullivan said that these words “in reality will be as false as the hair on some people’s heads or the teeth in the mouths of some people.”

So, under the heading of “General Prophesies of Doom,” we have “mixture of fascism and socialism,” and “road to chaos;” farm legislation is called “vicious pork barrel;” the TVA is a “crazy, cockeyed scheme;” Social Security will “enslave workers,” the Federal Trade Commission is “persistently inquisitorial,” and, of woman suffrage, the comment that “Democracy stinks.”

By 1950, Quigley was getting more business from Republicans than Democrats, but I like to think that he appreciated the work that went into the list. (If you want to check this out, the massive PDF is here, and the list begins on page 796 of the PDF.)

Historical footnote: O’Sullivan was a one-term Democratic congressman from Nebraska. In 1948, he defeated three-term Republican Rep. Howard Buffett, but in 1950, Buffett ran again and defeated him. Buffett served one more term before retiring, but he’s better known now as the father of Warren Buffett.