“One person’s ‘terrorist’ is another persons ‘Freedom fighter.’” So submits Ray Taliaferro on KGO San Francisco radio early (1:15am) this July 4th morning.

At first glance, we can understand how this change in perspective might transform how we understand someone who is fighting against one system to someone who is fighting for a new system. However, this DJ used the example of George Washington as the terrorist and called the Washington Monument our first national terrorist monument.

As it happens, I am a patriot when it comes to our founding fathers and the principles of individual liberty and freedom from government. In this sense, calling my homie a terrorist pissed me off. While George Washington may have had his failings, this blatant attempt to cast a pall on his reputation rubs me the wrong way.

However, in a much more important sense, that is irrelevant. What is much more important is a terrible misuse and twisting of the English language that has become almost common in this debate. Now, it is not for me to say the “right” way to define the word “terrorist.” The word can have several meanings, including one in which George Washington’s activities could be considered terrorism.

The critically important point is that this would not fit the way most of us use the word “terrorist.” When we call someone a terrorist, or define something as an act of terrorism, we mean to classify it as something horrid and unconscionable. It is an act specifically designed to create terror in the hearts of those who witness and hear about it. It is for this reason that “terrorism” is considered reprehensible.

If, on the other hand, we broaden the word “terrorism” to mean any act of violence done for political reasons, regardless of its nature, tone, or conformity to accepted practices of war, the word loses its reprehensible and pejorative tone. It ceases to be detestable and abhorrent behavior, and becomes a description of standard wartime practice.

Here is where the trick of language comes in. When the DJ labeles George Washington a “terrorist,” he wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he wants to use the general, non-pejorative meaning of the word so that George Washington’s actions will fit under its purview. On the other hand, he wants to use the pejorative meaning of the word so thatGeorge Washington’s actions will be viewed as equally reprehensible to those who crashed airplanes into the two towers.

This is similar to Amnesty International’s likening of Guantánamo Bay to the gulags, are those who claim that George Bush’s policies are equally as destructive as Hitler’s. While there are certainly definitions through which we can equate them, if we use those definitions, they lose the pejorative and reprehensible meanings that are intended by the comparison.

This type of manipulation of language, while it makes for great rhetoric and against those who support the war on terror, leads to the disintegration of the public dialogue and any hope of building the types of consensus that would lead to the eventual peace they claim to be arguing for.

If we truly wish to forward the conversation either for the war on terror or against it, we must use language to communicate not obfuscate the truth. It is through precision in language and clarity in our concepts, judgments, and evaluations that the road to peace and global cooperation will be found. Those who deal in verbal slight of mouth around these issues, however clever they may think themselves to be, are part of the problem not the solution.

For purposes of clarity, I will not call them “terrorists” of language, but will point out that they are saboteurs of the fundamental building blocks of the civilization that allows them to their very freedom of speech. While we need not outlaw such verbal bandits, it is important that we recognize and name them for what they are: collaborators with chaos, architects of anarchy, destroyers of decency.

Mark Lewis
RationalSpirituality

July 4th, 2005 | Global War On Terror

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