Rapaire's point is doubly relevant in the age of the internet, when you can search the world for communications which simply reinforce what you already hold to be true; multiplied a billion-fold, this capability can make a thousand fractured, insulated, self-protecting islands of disagreement. Read any hot issue where reader comments are appended in the modern media and you will see the voices of these hardened camps getting strident and shrill because they have lost the art of dialogue with differing viewpoints, and so resort to namecalling. Hell, I've done it myself!!

It is a fundamental of all reasoning communication that a definition of terms is necessary to the resolution of a problem or any collision between points of view. Different frameworks and different assumptions, often embedded below the conscious level of the person in the argument, tend to make a lot of dialogue heat up because of the inherent difference in definitions of terms.

When Ann Coulter calls me a "liberal", I know I am being insulted; if Thomas Jefferson were to call me a "liberal", I'd be proud of it. Same noise, same letters, but anyone who thinks it is the same word is not paying attention.

This is why it is a national disgrace that dictionaries have fallen into less use, and that the boneheads in some states thinks politics ought to be a criterion for choosing textbooks. Without definitions, words become reactive buttons, and children are taught acceptable reactionary patterns rather than knowldege and citizenship.


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