General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just noticed that amongst all the 'blame the parents' and 'arm the teacher' threads [View all]IDoMath
(404 posts)If we now count Bushmaster rifles as WMDs then certainly the Iraqi army had thousands of equivalent weapons and worse! Thus, Bush must have been right to start a war in Iraq in order to get rid of all the Weapons of Mass Destruction. In fact, every country in the world has Weapons of Mass Destruction so we have a ready-made excuse to invade each and every one of them.
So, you see, language DOES matter.
Communist, Nazi, Socialist, Liberal, fascist, terrorist - these are all words which have been rendered virtually meaningless by misuse and overuse.
If someone commits a basic street mugging, are they a terrorist? That question matters because if they are a terrorist we are going to have to warehouse them for a long time in a very expensive prison. People have referred to #Occupy as an act of terrorism.
I am not using semantics to defend guns, this thread started as a request for toning down hyperbole. But I guess that makes me a "child" who is an "anti-American" "subversive" "NRA Puppet."
So, if my main tool is semantics, yours must be hysterical name-calling.