Words Have Meaning

I'm not a linguist, I am not an expert at framing debate. I am a 25 year old who is not a formal writer but a blogger, and not a very good one at that.

But I understand something about vocabulary and the way words can be manipulated to give false impressions.

The recent use of vocabulary by the Mainstream Media, Political Pundits and the Politicians seems quite abusive of the normal boundaries of language.

The way words are being manipulated recently seems to be something new, but maybe it's not.

"The Patriot Act" is not patriotic, it expands the powers of the government therefore the act is unpatriotic.

"Prisoners of War" become "enemy combatants".

The wording is just a clever way to strip human beings, however bad they may or may not be, of the rights laid forth in the Geneva Convention.

"Torture" becomes "interrogation techniques".

Question : Would they be called "interrogation techniques" if someone practiced them on an American soldier? I bet it would be called "torture" so it must be "torture".

"Islamic Militants" or "Islamic Extremist" becomes "Islamist"

Islamist is a slur in my eyes, it's a way to try to tie the Islamic militancy directly to all Islamic people and that don't fly in my book.

If your good at manipulating language you can almost manipulate reality.

Abraham Lincoln said "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

George W. Bush said "You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."