Emboldening the Enemy

Ever since I saw Jon Stewart’s spiel about emboldening the enemy on the Daily Show, I’ve been hyper-conscious of the word. A quick google search yielded this nifty entry on emboldening the enemy at Source Watch. So when I saw this headline at MSNBC, it caught my attention: Abortion ruling emboldens opponents. “Emboldening” is a word I associate so closely with “terrorists” now that it’s not hard for me to read “Abortion ruling emboldens opponents” as “Abortion ruling emboldens terrorists.” Well, they -are- terrorists, but that’s beside the point. Or is it? Maybe it’s just a vast liberal conspiracy. I wish there were such a thing.