An old joke, relevant to this post:
What's the opposite of progress?
Congress

The word "progressif" must have been suggested to a French writer by the Devil himself it is such bad French. What a face the illustrious dead, in whose society I live, would have made at it!--
Tocqueville

As a supreme if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label.--
Joseph Schumpeter

There are fits of forgetfulness or deceit which terrify; you open your ears, you rub your eyes, not knowing whether you are awake or asleep. When the imperturbable individual to whom you owe such assertions descends from the rostrum and takes his seat impassively, you follow him with your gaze, suspended as you are, between a kind of astonishment and a sort of admiration; you are unsure whether the man has not received some authority from nature giving him the power to recreate or annihilate the truth.--
Chateaubriand

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.--
Orwell

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.--
Plato

Excellent idea.

Another American checking in.

An as a bonus: "condom chewing San Francisco" -- You should get a Pulitzer Prize for that phrase.

Bravo Zulu Gerard!
American is unattackable. Brilliant! I can hear progressives sputtering as they try to say Americans are really conservatives, independents, or republicans, etc..

From a fellow American: well done, Sir. :^)

Nobody does it better -- more to the point, nobody SAYS it better -- than you, Gerard. Thanks.

Pity we didn't have the internets back when you were a rip-roaring radical before embarking on a lucrative career as a pornographer. It would be amusing to compare the young opportunist with the older, 'wiser' one.

Cheers.