Democracy's lexically transmitted disease

One of the more entertaining cues to watch for as to what's important to a given political actor (particularly one not known for eloquence) is when he, she or it suddenly turns into a dictional stickler.

The most obvious example at the moment is the overserved dispute dawdling in the elite echo chamber over whether Iraq is really a "civil war," or just "violent factional skirmishing," or "an inordinately raucous orgy of freedom," or something else entirely.

But examples are all around. Take the bill that recently passed in Congress making it a crime to "threaten or intimidate" medical researchers who use animal subjects, deemed the "Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act:"

"The frightening thing for me is that it heavily criminalizes civil disobedience, and just for animal rights activists," said Lori Nitzel, a Madison attorney and executive director of Alliance for Animals, a statewide group that pledges nonviolence.

Yes, forget, "Go limp!" and sit-ins, apparently "civil disobedience" burns considerably more calories these days:

During the protests, which were carried out at seven homes over four nights, about a dozen activists broadcast test-lab footage from the video truck and yelled epithets through bullhorns. They distributed fliers to neighbors with the researchers' photographs, addresses and alleged misdeeds, and they left sidewalk chalk markings such as "monkey murderer."

Well, I'm sure that will compel those simian scourges to pack up their probes and go home, and take a meaningful chunk of the medical research establishment with them.

Protest wisely applied is all well and good, but when dissidents elect to disseminate their message so offensively, they rarely affect any good and merely poison the well against their own causes, however righteous, with their misdirected and often harmful actions.

Granted, given how it's been tainted in recent years, perhaps "terrorism" was not the best term to affix to this particular effort. But then again, what else do you call attacking private citizens attempting to live their private lives based on their relatively low-level association with an ideological evil you sincerely believe it's your moral obligation to combat?

Besides, take it from Dick Cheney, stem-cell research proponents, carnivores and just about every other seemingly disparate interest you can think of: One person's "torture" is just another's "getting tough with the few to benefit the many."

That's the beauty, power and absurdity of words, able to turn us all into open books.

How else do you explain the $500 million price tag now reportedly affixed to the George W. Bush Presidential Library? The man has to have some shot at a tangible, decent legacy, after all.

And, you know, all those back issues of Highlights and Weekly Reader aren't going to catalog themselves.