Using the wrong language is more than an unimportant tangent – it’s at the core of the issue. Like any legislative contest in any democracy, rhetoric is going to play a huge role in determining who wins people over. We’re falling behind and we need to start winning people over. If we use poorly worded arguments, we can end up sounding uninformed, hostile, juvenile, or just plain nuts.

Instead, we should be finding language and rhetorical framings that make us – and our point – seem sound, well-reasoned, and scientifically-grounded. Comparing ourselves to historical examples of oppressed minorities when most of us are relatively well-to-do professionals in the mainstream is not going to work. We may FEEL that way (oppressed) and may even be that way in some sense, but that doesn’t mean others will see our analogy as accurate; the circumstances are too different. Comparing our foes to nazis or tyrants won’t be well-received either.

Finally, inferring malicious intentions in our opposition probably won’t help our cause either. The reality is they probably think they are doing the right thing. They probably honestly believe they are interpreting the science correctly and “protecting” lives. I’ve known a few and I know they mean well even if they are uninformed. They’re wrong, they’re misunderstanding the little science that does exist, and they’re overreacting…but I don’t see a reason to doubt their sincerity or to infer that they are tyrannical lunatics hell-bent on destroying freedom. Talk like that won’t help our cause in the long-run.

Patrick – yes, anti-smoking idiots abuse language in pursuit of their aims. I thought that was one of the things we didn’t like about them.

But let’s just drop it; I am dragging the discussion off-point. On the point of the post, I think you are right to call this out – often I have thought it would be good to just cut the cigarette smokers loose in this fight, but if you think about it, we are stuck with them, as the antismoking groups don’t and never will make a dstinction.

Dirk – that “existing” language is unreal.

I can’t speak for Benjy, but you seem to be projecting. He reffered to appeasement and how it didn’t work 70 years ago. Politicians refer to appeasement all the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement) and ti doesn’t equate the parties to Nazis. It just happens that the most prominent failure of appeasement involved Nazi Germany.

Think of it this way:

Nazis enacted smoking bans. Nazis competed in the olympics. Nazis disliked French people. Nazis ate three meals a day. Nazis attempted to exterminate a race of people.

If you can’t figure out how to judge everything they did on their own merits, you’re the one with the problem.

I don’t know whether I consider it a “war” or not (I do feel like I need to defend my rights which are constantly under attack), but I do know that the other side considers it a war.

Take a look at the language used by the anti-tobacco activists, they regularly refer to the “war on smoking.” Here’s just one example.

And you didn’t even mention the Nazis once in those paragraphs, or hearken back to the world-historical struggle “70 years ago.” See how easy it is to avoid overblown comparisons and self-aggrandizing drama? That’s all I’m saying.

Nazi metaphors are not just metaphors; comparing someone to a Nazi is not value-equal to comparing them to a player in a memorable playoff game or another innocuous reference. Calling someone a Nazi is different. To take another example, I don’t really like lamb chops. Could you call me a racist against lamb chops? Sure, the metaphor works, I have an antipathy based on a genetic category. But it would seem awkward and overblown. Just like comparing a city councilman pushing a smoking ban to a nazi warlord seeking domination for an Aryan superrace.