In which the pond crosses the floor with Erica ... and ends up with the young Liberals ...

Indeed indeed Ms Martin and when thinking of Erica, the pond frequently thinks f&dbmsit; because the pond simply can't get enough of Erica in his new guise as free agent and activist:

Indeed, indeed, and long may Erica keep sniping at Malware, but sadly Ms Martin missed a delicious example of Erica's impeccable logic, which can be found elsewhere ...

Here he is in the Mercury:

Senator Abetz said Australians had little tolerance for ­racism and he trusted people to behave civilly. He said it was plain wrong and intellectually insulting for some to say that recent violent extremism and terrorism had their beginnings in extremist and hateful language. 
“When you have particular extremist ideologies ravaging the Middle East, justifying — indeed promoting — raping and murdering of women and children it is an affront to common ­sense to suggest that these acts and actions come from hateful language,” he said. 

Indeed, indeed. Language simply isn't involved in the matter.

Besides, it's a well known fact that hateful acts and actions only come from a loving and caring use of language ...

Which is why the pond is fully in favour of old farts stumbling into a woeful misuse and abuse of words such as "negro" ... if that can unite Erica with boofhead Mark Latham in a meeting of like minds, what a wonderful world it is ...

According to this text here, that dates the aware pair to somewhere around the mid 1970s or the time of LBJ:

From the 18th century to the mid-20th century, "negro" (later capitalized) was considered the correct and proper term for African Americans. It fell out of favor by the 1970s in the United States. 
In current English language usage, "Negro" generally is considered acceptable in a historical context or in the name of older organizations, as in the United Negro College Fund, and is used more commonly by those born before the post World War II baby boom. Lyndon B. Johnson was the last American president to publicly refer to the African American population as Negroes (to which, for much of his life, he gave the Texas pronunciation nigras, widely considered an insult by African Americans). Before he left office, he had begun to employ the word blacks, too.

LBJ left office January 20th, 1969, so we might note that it seems that any news in relation to the use of "negro" travelled so slowly to the outer reaches of the known universe that it had yet to reach the western suburbs of Sydney or Tasmania by 2015.

Alarmingly, Erica might not also have caught up with the news that this very language was one of the sparks that set off the Black Panthers:

Carmichael detailed the new thinking in a landmark speech he gave at the University of California in Berkeley in October 1966. "This country," he said, "knows what power is; knows it very well. And it knows what Black Power is 'cause it deprived black people of it for four hundred years ... The question is, why do white people in this country associate Black Power with violence? And the answer is because of their own inability to deal with blackness. If we said Negro Power, nobody would get scared ... Or if we said power for colored people everybody'd be for that. It is the word black that bothers people in this country, and that's their problem, not mine."
Henceforth, the word Negro was out and black was in - soon to be augmented by the term "Afro-American."
In Alabama, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization chose as its symbol the image of a black panther. As Stokely put it: "We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which sumbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far (against) the wall he's got nothing to do but spring out. And when he springs, he does not stop." (Google books here).

Conclusion? The careless use of the word "negro" by dumb white farts enrolled in the ancient school of language abuse - Erica and Mark Latham seem to be founding members - helped set off the fear-inspiring Black Panthers. Who knows? Daesh might even use language too ...

So much for the power of language, and so much for the enormous stupidity of Erica (and as a bonus, Mark Latham).

But once the pond gets a taste of the grapeshot and the shrapnel, this being a meditative Sunday, it's always hot for more.

So naturally the pond raced off to the Young Liberal Movement, anxious to catch up on their policy journal and the more extended and extensive thoughts of Erica, but it seems that things move very slowly in the world of Young Liberals, as slowly as Erica's grasp of trends in the English language.

Or perhaps one needs to subscribe to read Erica doing it for the young Libs, and so all that the pond could find was a copy of The Young Australian, Summer 2012/13 edition (yours for free if you follow the link).

Now some might think this a disappointing result, especially those who refuse to read the pond's gobbets, or those inclined to think that the lyrics to the song involved Young Americans ...

But such is the joy of serendipity, and chance and luck, that the pond was entranced to discover this excellent, if ancient piece - but then, as Erica is ancient, so surely Young Liberals must also think like the ancients, and truly Christopher Rath was a most excellent ancient:

Note the emblematic Coca Cola signage, note that the Catholic church has been doing well under Pell, note that the Pentecostals were on fire with bigotry, note that climate denialism was alive and well, note that monarchists were on the move, note that government funding of bigoted private schools full of fundamentalists was a way of offering assorted choices amongst various delicious brands of bigotry, and note that historically quaint photograph of Tony Abbott.

And there was more triumphalism to follow on the next page:

Indeed, indeed, and it's not just the Bolter and Mark Steyn and the IPA doing great work on freedom of speech - the land must allow Islamic fundamentalists to preach their gospel of hate, so that the Bolter might preach his, and the entire country become envenomed and angry and hostile and radical explosive movements might form and blow up things - but it's also brave Erica, showing how old codgers might claim fogey status by failing to understand that the freedom to speak should also involve the freedom to display some intelligence and wit ...

But as for the rest, what now, years on, young Christopher, as the refugee migrant returns to England in search of solace and speechifying, while back home the wicked Malware is in charge of the show?

I met a traveller from an antique downunder land 
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in Canberra. Near them, on the bunker grass, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: 
And on the pedestal these words appear: 
'My name is Ozymandiabbott, king of young Liberals: 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 
The lone and level policy sands stretch far away."

But don't despair young Christopher. There is hope. We might yet manage to match Stalin: