language police

the methods and fervor of the self-appointed language police can lead to a rigid orthodoxy -- and unintentional self-parody -- opening the movement to the scorn of conservative opponents and the mockery of cartoonists and late-night television hosts. [...] the utopian world envisioned by the language police would be bought at the expense of the ideals of individualism and democracy articulated in the "The Gettysburg Address": "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

1993 January 31, Michiko Kakutani, “The Word Police”, in New York Times