If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal. A while back I heard an otherwise intelligent C-Span presenter speak more than once of "an epidemic of drunk driving." But an epidemic, by definition, is an outbreak of a contagious disease in excess of what might normally be expected. To describe drunk driving as an epidemic, therefore, is to imply that it is a disease, which is precisely what it is not. Drunk driving is a freely chosen act. Use of 'epidemic' in connection with drunk driving aids and abets the cockeyed liberal view of the world according to which well-nigh every type of negative behavior is a disease.
Words mean things. Language matters. Don't talk like a liberal unless you are one.
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