I was recently watching a news interview. They were asking an Iowan their opinion on how the Supreme Court should rule on gay marriage. The person said, “I believe that the decision should be one that benefits society and is right.”

Wait a minute, what? What does that even mean? A decision that benefits society, that’s incredibly vague and both sides offer that anyway. What is right? Well that could go either way depending on who you are talking to.

This type of vague speech is not necessarily bad when you apply it to important matters, it creates problems. Whether it is health care reform or the war in Afghanistan, the idea of supplying only neutral terms is common.

Let’s take a look at how this is applied to the war in Afghanistan. This subject has had a ridiculous amount of neutrality and confusion in it. The catch phrase that we all associate with it is support our troops. Wait a minute, what does that even mean? It could mean to keep our troops there. However, it could mean to bring them home.

Take a look at the 2008 presidential election and you will see this clearly. I know no one wants to think about elections anymore but just stick with me. The election was a battle between the maverick and someone who was advocating change. Think back to the debates they had between the candidates. I remember distinctively that when John McCain was asked about fixing the health care system in America he responded by saying that he would do what a maverick would do in that situation. There it is again, someone using neutral terms.

Now here’s the main problem with this. When you are choosing the leader of your country you want to make an informed decision. How do you do that, well you do research but you also want to know how they will handle certain big issues like health care. If the candidate refuses to answer you in this way then how informed are you as a voter? This type of neutral speech is bad because with something as important as health care we want to know where it will be headed if the candidate becomes president. As you can see, doing what a maverick does, doesn’t really tell us much at all.

Believe it or not, this is a political strategy used to do things freely in Washington. Now you’re probably wondering what I’m jabbering about. The whole idea behind support our troops is like a blank check. What happens is, politicians from both sides of this debate will advocate supporting our troops. The public instinctively agrees with them and supports their decisions, because they do not want to be seen as someone who is against someone who is for supporting our troops. As you can see, if we just instinctively agree with someone based on just a neutral term, then the consequences may be terrible.

There are some who would disagree. Some would say, “look, there are situations where there is no clear answer and you are forced to use vagueness in your presentation.” Although this is a valid point there is a major flaw. This would work out fine; but it doesn’t usually work out this way.

Here’s the problem, what happens after information is gathered that makes the debate less vague? The issue is that even though new information is gathered the catch phrase for the movement would still be neutral and misleading.

For example, in the support our troops case that I discussed before, new information has been gathered on what to do or not. However, the catch phrase is still support our troops. So even though new information has been gathered, both sides of the debate are still using neutral and misleading terms.

So next time you see something that is neutral like support our troops, stop and think about what it really means.