“Single mother.”  I like them individually.  I like married mothers.  What I do not like is the response that “single mother” is understood to immediately provoke:  a brave soul who must endure a special hardship.  Women should conceive children within the confines of a marriage or partnership.  The success of children depends upon adequate care.  Children are meant to have two parents.  Children are not meant to be the burden of a lone parent who most often needs the resources of the state to raise the child.   I care about all my fellow human but I have no special sympathy for the many mothers who decide to bear children without a permanent partner.

“First responders.”  Part of a typical news show format is to feature first responders as a breed apart.  Paragons.  Always valorous.  Most policemen and women, firemen, and paramedics are admirable service-oriented people.  I respect them and appreciate the dangerousness of their jobs.  I remember being in awe of the firemen from Dennis Smith Report from Engine Company 82 when I read it in my youth.  I am still capable of awe but cops, firefighters, and paramedics are very much normal people.  They are not paragons automatically worthy of worship; they people with dangerous jobs.

“Wounded warriors.”  I was in the Army.  I was not wounded.  My father fought in WW II.  My grandfather fought in WW I.  Soldiers of all stripes interest me.  I am interested in their jobs, duty stations, and equipment.  Yet I do not genuflect when I hear the utterance of “wound warriors.”  I do not like the false patriotism that the term brings to mind in a Joseph Heller Catch-22 sort of way.  In our times soldiers are people who follow a career path and willingly submit themselves to the policies that political leaders set forth.  Just because someone served in Vietnam or Iraq does not sanctify that person in my eyes.  I respect their service even in the cases of deployment that I do not admire.  Vietnam was such a case as are most of current deployments in the Mideast.