Cavuto: Why is it so hard to call them 'terrorists'?

I've never understood the mindset of a terrorist or our reluctance to even use the word "terrorist."

It's like my doctor when he tries to find a nice way of saying I'm too fat.

"You could afford to lose a couple of pounds," he says. When I know he's thinking, "more like a couple of hundred!"

But that's human nature -- to err on the side of nice. But we're doing so with lunatics who aren't so nice.

Don't get me wrong. I'm the last to jump to conclusions and I commend the president for doing the same, when this Boston tragedy first hit -- aptly pointing out it was an "act of terror." I thought he comported himself very well and with great restraint. It's not easy playing consoler-in-chief, and sadly, he's had to play that role a few too many times. I think he does it well.

What disturbs me is our collective reluctance to take on the disturbed.

Whether homegrown or not, when you kill innocent people, you are a terrorist.

You have terrorized.

You are terrifying.

But I think "terrorist" is a leap too few take, especially in the media, because too many find the very word "terrorist" too much to take.

I understand the fear we don't want to paint whole peoples with the same brush. But I do find it odd we have no such trouble painting the well-to-do with the whole "fat cat" brush or those who question climate change, with the whole "ignorant fringe" brush.

But that's another brush and another issue. Here's my issue -- when you call someone a terrorist, you're not saying they're Al Qaeda or Chechen or Basque separatists -- or any separatists -- just that those who kill innocent civilians automatically makes them terrorists.

We're a good people trying to be nice and diplomatic. But we're doing it with savages, who'd sooner see us nice and dead.