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Eliana Johnson vs. Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and the thesaurus

Conservative Eliana Johnson of the National Review made some headlines recently with her "piece" entitled, "President Obama Commemorates the 'Senseless' Holocaust."

On Holocaust Rememberance Day, the president said the following - "[Survivors who bore witness to] the horrors of the cattle cars, ghettos, and concentration camps have witnessed humanity at its very worst and know too well the pain of losing loved ones to senseless violence."

Ms. Johnson took great issue with the president's words "senseless violence" when describing the Holocaust.

Johnson went on to say the following in her "piece" - "Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was - and to which the president is - implacably opposed, but it is hardly 'senseless.' By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the 'unification of all Germans,' a demand for 'land and territory for the sustenance of our people,' and an assertion that 'no Jew can be a member of the race.' Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded."

Without even giving the article any deep thought, I had to shake my head and think to myself, "Really? This woman is going to come after the president for referring to the Holocaust as 'senseless violence' and possibly claim that Nazism was sensible? That's not going to rub anyone the wrong way..."

Following the inevitable backlash Ms. Johnson received due to her "piece," she wrote another in an attempt to clarify her statements.

In this second "piece," Johnson wrote, "I've since been accused of justifying Nazism and of anti-Semitism. This is not only wrong, but cheap."

Yeah, about that... I think one piece of advice that could serve Ms. Johnson and others like her well in their futures is if a person feels that upon writing a piece, he or she may need to write a second piece to decry claims that he/she is pro-Nazi or anti-Semite, then one may want to go a different direction with said writing.

The author immediately followed that with: "The opposite of 'senseless' is not, as many have suggested, 'sensible.' Nor is it 'good.'"

Actually, Ms. Johnson, and this is kind of funny when one thinks about it - but one potentially misinterpreting her writing's meaning or intent would be quite similar to what she may have done with regard to President Obama's words.

You see, in Ms. Johnson's mind, the opposite of "senseless" is not "sensible" or "good," because that's not how she used it in her writing. However, as the thesaurus will tell us, there are many antonyms to the word "senseless." They are: Feeling, intelligent, rational, reasonable, sensible, and wise. So, actually, if one wants to get technical here, the opposite of "senseless" is "sensible" in some contexts. Am I for one going to say I can crawl inside the mind of Ms. Johnson and declare without any hesitation that she was labeling Nazism as sensible? No. However, some have done that, just as she did with regard to the president. Just as I'm not going to pretend to know with 100% certainty what Johnson's true message and intent was with her original writing, she shouldn't have done similarly with President Obama's labeling the Holocaust as "senseless violence."

As there are multiple antonyms of the word "senseless," there too are multiple definitions of it as well, including:

1) Destitute or deprived of sensation; unconscious.

2) Lacking mental perception, appreciation, or comprehension.

3) Stupid or foolish, as persons or actions.

4) Nonsensical or meaningless.

It seems quite obvious that Ms. Johnson believes the president used the word "senseless" as that described in the fourth definition above - "nonsensical or meaningless." However, just as she was offended by many claiming that she was calling Nazis sensible, the president may very well have been offended by her claim that he was referring to those acts as meaningless. Chances are high that Eliana Johnson does not believe that the Nazis were a sensible people and chances are high that the President of the United States doesn't believe the acts of violence perpetrated by that very group were meaningless.

From this point forward, Ms. Johnson may want to pick her fights (and words) better. If she really wanted to go after a president for calling the violent acts perpetrated during the Holocaust senseless, I guess my question is why did she wait 30 years for Barack Obama when she had plenty of time to write such a "piece" surrounding the words used by Ronald Reagan.

At a White House meeting with Jewish leaders on February 2nd of 1983, former President Reagan said this:  "Those who perished as a result of Nazi terror, millions of individual men and women and children whose lives were taken so senselessly, must never be forgotten."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/339003/president-obama-commemorates-senseless-holocaust-eliana-johnson

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/339583/senseless-violence-eliana-johnson

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/senseless?s=t

 http://thesaurus.com/browse/senseless?s=t

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