I have to disagree. Our language used to be fairly effective. Now words have so many meanings and entendre (let alone all of the words we are racing to remove from circulation) that it is becoming phenomenally inefficient and cumbersome.

To make a PC analogy, did you know that at the beginning of the Great Depression the word Depression was used because it was not as scary as the word Recession that had so plagued the previous decades. Of course now we see a reversal and thus in that instance as so many others the meaning and weight and intent of words has been irrevocably altered or destroyed (by a word simultaneously meaning contradictory things, Ie depression becomes paradoxically less severe and more severe than the word recession).

Mean people will always say mean things no matter which words we give them to say them with. Removing perfectly good words like retard (meaning set back, as in cars) only allows them to hurt more people and in fact our society and culture as a whole.