So the question on the ballot paper will invite voters to affirm that they want to stay in the European Union rather than ask whether they want to leave.
Stories grounded in the landscape also loom large, in customs such as choosing the gleaning queen when the harvest is brought in, or bumping heads against boundary stones to affirm the limits of the local world.
Surprisingly, he voted to uphold whole-life sentences in England and Wales – surprising because, three years earlier, in another case at the European court, he had said: "I consider that the time has come when the court should clearly affirm that the imposition of an irreducible life sentence, even on an adult offender, is in principle inconsistent with article three of the convention".
Five-thousand members of the Women's Institute have gathered to mark 100 years of their foundation, and as the defiant "Ladies Toilett" signs stuck on the doors of the gents' affirm, for one day at least, this is decidedly a women's world.
Rather, "there will be cases where, when couples marry to access benefits and then affirm their relationship publicly, discrimination in the wider community may follow," he says.
Not only is this dubious parenting proposal, wherein the GOP would formally affirm an alleged moral deficiency of gay Americans, necessarily at odds with the recommendations of the Preibus report, but it pits party leadership at odds with a majority of Americans.
Looking out over a sea of hands on a recent school visit, I felt a warm rush of elation at the sight of every single pupil raising their arm to affirm that they were a feminist.
The former White House hopeful has written to the Swiss consulate asking to withdraw her citizenship request just two days after it was first reported that she had taken steps to affirm it.
And he will surely use his UN address to affirm his support for the world body, and more generally for multilateral diplomacy.
Recent monthly reports have recounted a truly dismal pace of job creation for so robust an economic recovery, and opinion polls affirm that this is by far President Bush's weakest point.
Not only did the generals, both in their early 60s, affirm the army's commitment to the goals of the revolution, including a swift transition to democracy under civilian rule.
