Strictly speaking you’re correct, but I think in this case “Rally to Restore Sanity” is less accurate but substantially more concise than “Rally to Promote a More Deliberative Discourse” or something similar that would be more accurate.
I’m not so sure. Its main promoter, John Stewart, seems to switch from funny to serious whenever he needs to make a point. The Rally to Restore Sanity seems to be meant more to alter the American media discourse than to entertain. Of course, those goals aren’t mutually exclusive; but there’s no reason to let the goal of entertaining people undermine the goal of promoting sanity in politics.
How can you restore something that was never there?
Sanity can be a quantity measured relative to some standard value, just like elevation.
If we’re 100 meters below sea level and fall an additional 20 meters, we can have a rally to restore height to get back up to −100.
Yeah, but did we really fall to a new low in the recent past that we can return from?
Strictly speaking you’re correct, but I think in this case “Rally to Restore Sanity” is less accurate but substantially more concise than “Rally to Promote a More Deliberative Discourse” or something similar that would be more accurate.
Isn’t this a comedy event to begin with?
I’m not so sure. Its main promoter, John Stewart, seems to switch from funny to serious whenever he needs to make a point. The Rally to Restore Sanity seems to be meant more to alter the American media discourse than to entertain. Of course, those goals aren’t mutually exclusive; but there’s no reason to let the goal of entertaining people undermine the goal of promoting sanity in politics.