In reality, Democratic unease with this language is almost entirely a function of strategic, rather than empathic, thinking—a reflection of the greater seriousness with which the party treats national security and foreign affairs than Republicans. And the most shameless thing about it is that many Republicans understand the objection at a deeply personal level. Their nomenclature wouldn’t survive even one Presidential Daily Brief. But they’re happy to set that all aside for immediate political expediency.

At the debate Saturday, Hillary Clinton explained her unease with saying we are at war with “radical Islam.”

You can talk about Islamists who clearly are also jihadists, but …we’ve got to reach out to Muslim countries. We’ve got to have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam, that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a mosque in Washington, we are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression. And, yes, we are at war with those people. But I don’t want us to be painting with too broad a brush.

Clinton stipulated instead that we’re at war with “jihadists.” She could perhaps have beat Republicans at their own faux-specificity game by referring to them as “Salafist Jihadists.” But her point is clear: Nobody disputes that the perpetrators of the attacks in France were Muslim, but insisting on a rote connection between jihadis and the religion they claim makes it harder for the U.S. to enlist non-jihadi Muslims into the fight against terrorism.

Republicans claim to be aghast at this logic, but they in many ways personify it.

The most commented-upon response to Clinton came from Senator Marco Rubio, who deployed a predictable but unusually inapt simile. “I don’t understand it. That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves. We are at war with radical Islam, with an interpretation of Islam by a significant number of people around the world, who they believe now justifies them in killing those who don’t agree with their ideology.” Others have deconstructed and reconstructed the comparison to make better sense of it. But the best way to illustrate the point is by reference to one of the right’s own pet peeves.