Words matter.
Note that we didn't say black words matter, or white words matter, or Christian words matter, or Islamic words matter, or Democrat words matter, or Republican words matter.
Words matter.
So the next time you hear someone say "Islamic terrorism," ask them if it's OK for all of America to call the Planned Parenthood shooter an evangelical Christian terrorist.
See, that's the trouble with labels. All too often, labels make the person or thing they describe just one more pawn in the game of politics, propaganda, desensitization and hate. And each pawn's fall leads to a game-ending checkmate.
An occasional label might be appropriate shorthand in some cases, like a quick sort to bookend Democrats and Republicans.
But it's not OK for people. Or lives.
What's more, it's not accurate.
At their common denominator, Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Dear, Chattanooga servicemen shooter Muhammad Abdulazeez, and each perpetrator of the Paris massacres were simply murderers. And they were murderers with similar motives based on their perverted understandings of their religions.
If you absolutely must be descriptive, they are all "religious terrorists."
It feels uncomfortable, doesn't it? And well it should - the oxymoron that it is.
But then terrorism - standing all alone without any adjective beside it - is another word that both misleads and matters.
It screams we should be afraid. In fact, we shouldn't. At least not afraid of terrorism.
In 2013, U.S. News and World Report noted that "of the more than 300 American deaths from political violence and mass shootings since 9/11, only 33 have come at the hands of Muslim-Americans, according to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security."
During that same period, 180,000 Americans were murdered for reasons unrelated to terrorism. And in 2012, mass shootings killed 66 Americans, "twice as many fatalities as from Muslim-American terrorism in all 11 years since 9/11," according to the Triangle Center's research team.
Earlier this year, the Centre for Research on Globalization, an independent and non-profit research and media organization based in Montreal, sought updated numbers but found that more recent tallies differed based on the liberal or conservative agendas of who was counting. So the global research group decided to do its own count based on The START Global Terrorism Database. Citing 104,000 terrorist incidents, the START file is the most comprehensive open-source database open to the public.
The Centre for Research counted 2,400 (now 2,646 through 2014) terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, 60 carried out by Muslims. In other words, 2.5 percent of all terrorist attacks on U.S. soil after 1970.
Another study undertaken by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism - called "Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States" - examined terror incidents between 1970 and 2011. That research found that just under a third were motivated by ethno-nationalist/separatist agendas, 28 percent were motivated by single issues, such as animal rights or opposition to war, and seven percent were motivated by religious beliefs. In addition, 11 percent of the perpetrator groups were classified as extreme right-wing, and 22 percent were categorized as extreme left-wing.
But the consortium did notice a distinct shift in the dominant ideologies of the terrorist groups over time, with the proportion of "emerging ethno-nationalist/separatist terrorist groups declining and the proportion of religious terrorist groups increasing."
The terrorist groups with religious ideologies represented 40 percent of all emergent groups from 2000-2011 (two out of five). They only accounted for 7 percent of groups over the longer time period.
Should we be wary? Certainly. Should we be terrorized? No.
Unless we're talking about words and labels. We should be very concerned about spreading the polarizing propaganda that labels something or someone. Would we even dream of saying Catholic extremists, Baptist terrorists or Irish rapists?
Politically correct is not two dirty words strung together, but thinking so may be politically inept and morally bankrupt.
Words and feelings - like lives - matter.