Let’s get rid of the bansturbators!

There are many new words that have been coined recently. Some of them, reflecting the times we live in, deserve inclusion in the dictionary.

“One candidate is the verb “to bansturbate” (origin, Harry Haddock, who blogs at Nationofshopkeepers.wordpress.com). The word – a fusion of ‘ban’ and the term for self-abuse – refers to both the public abuse of the rights of the citizenry as things that some people simply disapprove of are made illegal, and the near-sexual frisson of pleasure gained by those who pass such laws. Much of the urge to ban is driven, just like Puritanism, by the fear that some people, somewhere, may be enjoying themselves; the rest by the terror of politicians and bureaucrats who fear that if they don’t do something, anything, we might begin to wonder why we pay them.”