• A businessman claims that he wishes no special privileges and will thrive if "left alone" by his foreign competitors. Asking his government to intervene to "protect" him from such market competition, he describes this proposed initiation of force as (incredibly) a laissez-faire policy. (In this example, taken from actual current events, the businessman's inverted view of reality seems to verge on schizophrenia.)

• In a slightly more subtle version of the same error, the absence of an increase in something is confused with a decrease in that thing. For instance, a proposal not to increase government spending on an item is depicted as a "program cut." In extreme cases, even proposals to increase expenditures at a rate smaller than past increases are described as "cutbacks." (Such Orwellian logical obscurantism, of course, serves to drum up popular support for ever-increasing government spending.)

Again, no attempt is made at this point to suggest proper policies with regard to these examples. Such an effort which would be highly premature, since we have not developed the requisite ethical premises. Here we seek only to point out a fundamental requirement for proper analysis of such situations: the clear distinction between existence and nonexistence, between the positive and the negative, and between the presence and absence of action.