The word-hoard of the English language keeps growing, as new words come into existence and into our vocabulary. This article–Harold Meyerson - Back to The ’60s - washingtonpost.com–gives us “Sixtiesism,” which could be defined as a reversion to the issues and mindset that characterized the 1960’s. The article also coins a related word: Sixties-ization. Meaning imposing the issues and mindset of the 1960’s on contemporary times or on an individual.

The author is using those terms to analyze the current Democratic presidential race, as all of those elderly Sixties survivors–Rev. Wright, those Weather Underground terrorists–and the Sixties issues of Civil Rights and Peace are being injected, for better or worse, into today’s campaigns.

Still, the words are the best part of the argument. So what are some other examples of Sixtiesism? Of Sixtiesization?

America. . .what is the matter with you? On “American Idol,” the two best performances of the previous night, Syesha’s and Carly’s, landed up when the votes were tallied as the bottom two! And Carly, the tatooed Irish lass who certainly belonged in the top three of the whole bunch, got voted off.

(In saying these two performances were the best, I’m not applying my own personal arcane tastes in classical music or alt country. The two did rock numbers–as much as Andrew Lloyd Weber can compose rock numbers–but they did them very, very well.)

Whereas the two worst performances, an awful performance of an awful song, “Memories,” by the dreadlocked Jason and an effort by Brooke in which she actually forgot the lyrics and had to start all over, made their perpetrators “safe.”

This is a terrible injustice. So was voting off the Australian, Michael Johns, but this conjunction of awarding the two worst and punishing the two best is just wrong.

This comes from letting little children have cell phones. The contest is in danger of being taken over by young girls enthralled by “cute” boys. (True, two of these–the two Davids–are worthy of winning. David Cook, I think, is the best, rocker though he is. David Archeleta, though, I predict, will win.)

The government needs to intervene. Congress should investigate. American Idol should be regulated. Those who vote more responsibly should get tax cuts. President Bush should send in the troops.

America, what are you going to do when making a more important decision, like picking a president?

This article surveys our energy problems and the global food and starvation crisis caused to a major extent by the biofuel fiasco. The solution the article lifts up is nuclear energy! It does not pollute the air like other fuels. It is pretty much inexhaustible. And yet, people fear it irrationally. A nuclear power plant does NOT set off an atom bomb. It’s not like on the Simpsons, generating three eyed fish and irradiating the community. The radiation can be managed pretty easily.

Do you buy that argument, that environmentalists, in blocking the building of new nuclear energy plants, are harming the environment?

Or can another case be made against nuclear energy, that it violates the basic building block of matter in a profoundly unnatural and so immoral way?

At any rate, when the left ridicules President Bush, pro-lifers, creationists, and social conservatives in general for being “anti-science”–whether their stances are valid or not– can we include anti-nuclear activists in that group?

The young girl, named Sarah Barlow, who called authorities from that Texas polygamist compound claiming that she being abused, leading to a raid and the taking of 400 children away from their mothers? Evidence has come in that indicates she was a 33-year-old African-American woman from Colorado with a history of phoning in false accusations of sex abuse. But Texas authorities still vow to “press on.” FromTexas 911 Calls Linked To 33-Year-Old in Colo. - washingtonpost.com:

SAN ANGELO, Tex., April 23 — The phone calls that triggered a massive raid on a polygamist compound in west Texas — in which a quavering girl’s voice described being forcibly married at 15 — have been linked to a Colorado woman with a history of making false claims of sexual abuse, according to an affidavit filed in Colorado Springs.

The affidavit says calls that allegedly came from “Sarah Barlow” — a teenage girl at the Yearning for Zion Ranch outside Eldorado, Tex. — actually came from numbers connected to Rozita Swinton, 33, of Colorado Springs. The affidavit also notes Swinton’s possible involvement in a series of separate but similar reports in which the young caller described being abused by a pastor, an uncle or her father.

Texas authorities yesterday said they have not determined whether the calls about the Yearning for Zion Ranch were a hoax and that they plan to press on with their investigation of possible sexual abuse there. More than 400 children are now in state custody, as authorities try to sort out what happened at the ranch run by a polygamist group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.