No dearie; I am deriving her intent by a host of different means -- familiarity with all of her work (not just this one column), familiarity with the process of writing editorials, familiarity with the tools used in writing any opinion piece or creative work, familiarity with the complexities of the English language, and a couple of other things I needn't publicize on this forum.
Okey-dokey?? ;-p
Thank you, SLJP, somewhere along the line that needed to be said.
So many here love to misinterpret statements and then write 20 chapters of criticism about the misinterpretation, and then feel smug that they have actually done something useful!
Amazing, then, that with my familiarity with the English language, with literature and its genres, and with essay writing, I came up with completely different results.
Now, you yourself say that she was not speaking satirically, but rather "symbolically" or "hyperbolically". That she was not intending to be understood literally. This does make more sense than asserting (as others here have done) that she was being satirical. However, the problem remains that she used the words "convert them to Christianity" as part of a compound predicate in the same sentence. Do you believe that she meant the words "invade" and "kill" symbolically? These are strong actions she is advocating. Why is it unreasonable to assume that she means "convert" in the same literal sense as "invade" and "kill"? On what basis do you interpret her otherwise?