most powerful defense against what Stuart Chase called the "tyranny of words," and against the bondage to others that inevitably follows, is the mental process that Dr. Percy W. Bridgman described and advocated in his book The Logic of Modern Physics. It's called operational thinking.

When one thinks operationally, he or she focuses on the process underlying a word or a word-string, rather than on the words themselves.

As Dr. Bridgman put it, "The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it." In other words, don't tell me what a word means; explain to me how it works.

Take the word friction, for example. The dictionary defines it as "the force that resists relative motion between two bodies in contact."

Not very clear, I don't think.

But how about: When an object is placed on an inclined plane, friction is what we call the force that keeps that object from sliding down the slope.

According to Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition , "political correctness" means "conformance to a belief that languages and practices which could offend political sensibilities, as in matters of sex or race, should be eliminated." And "censorship" means "the institution, system, or practice of examining in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable."

Clearly, the processes underlying the terms "political correctness" and "censorship" are the same — telling people what they may not say.

Ergo, the terms "political correctness" and "censorship," stripped of all emotional content and convoluted reasoning, both have exactly the same meaning.

Now you may not like what I just said. You may even think that it's politically incorrect. But to use a phrase that I've used so many times before: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck . . . .

Think about it.