> "Note on abridgment. NATO, SEATO, UN, AFL-CIO, AEC, but also USSR,
> DDR, etc. Most of these abbreviations are perfectly reasonable and
> justified by the length of the unabbreviated designata. However, one
> might venture to see in some of them a "cunning of Reason"--the
> abbreviation may help to repress undesired questions. NATO does not
> suggest what North Atlantic Treaty Organization says, namely, a treaty
> among nations on the North-Atlantic--in which case one might ask
> questions about the membership of Greece and Turkey. USSR abbreviates
> Socialism and Soviet; DDR: democratic. UN dispenses with undue
> emphasis on "united"; SEATO with those Southeast-Asian countries which
> do not belong to it. AFL-CIO entombs the radical difference which once
> separated the two organizations, and AEC is just one administrative
> agency among many others. The abbreviations denote that and only that
> which is institutionalized in such a way that the transcending
> connotation is cut off. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once
> it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general
> usage, "sanctioned" by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive
> value and serves merely for recognition of an unquestionable fact."
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