Language Matters – Page 18 – Maverick Philosopher

On ‘Devout’

One reads that so-and-so is a 'devout Catholic' or a 'devout Muslim.'

How would the writer know? Devotion is an interior state inaccessible to observation from without. The practicing Catholic or observant Muslim, by contrast, can be seen to be such by others. So if what you mean to convey is that so-and-so is a practicing or observant Christian, Muslim, or Jew, then you should write that. It is obvious that the practitioner of a religion need not be particularly devout or devout at all. And that includes priests, rabbis, and imams.

I grant that external practices are evidence of inner attitude. So, by the dictionary definition, you would not be wrong to call a regular practitioner of a religion 'devout.' But here at Maverick Philosopher our standards are a cut above those of a mere dictionary. We aim at precision in thought and speech. And sometimes we miss the mark.

So rather than bandy about, lemming-like, an oft-heard phrase, journalists should ask themselves whether the alternatives suggested above are more appropriate.

Language matters.

Speaking of dictionaries, The Dictionary Fallacy is a very good article in my biased opinion. It will cost you some effort, but a little hard work never hurt anybody.

Unbegriff

This passage from Schopenhauer illustrates one of my favorite German words, Unbegriff, for which we have no simple equivalent in standard English.

"An impersonal God is no God at all, but only a word misused, an unconcept, a contradictio in adjecto, a philosophy professor's shibboleth, a word with which he tries to weasel his way after having had to give up the thing." (my trans.)

I read Schopenhauer as attacking those who want to have it both ways at once: they want to continue talking about God after having abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So they speak of an impersonal God, a construction in which the adjective 'contradicts' the noun. (The Ostrich of London may perhaps fruitfully reflect on the deliberate use-mention fudge in my last sentence.)

Language Rant: When to Capitalize the Initial Letter in ‘Earth’

I found the following sentence in David Benatar's The Human Predicament, p. 36:

Nothing we do on earth has any effect beyond it. (36)

This sentence slipped past the Oxford editors. The initial letter of 'earth' ought to be capitalized since the word is being used as the proper name of a planet. A while back, Cher threatened to leave for Jupiter, not jupiter, should Trump win the election. Men are from Mars, not mars, and women from Venus, not venus.

Mons veneris, however, is from the proper name of the goddess of love, not the planet. You know what it means and you know that it does not refer to an extraterrestrial geological formation.

But if you are talking about dirt or soil or the mythical Aristotelian element, then write 'earth.' The lower case is also employed in such expressions as 'What on earth are you saying.'

The same goes for such expressions as 'She's not long for this earth.' When a person on Earth dies, his body does not leave Earth. But he leaves the world in one sense of 'world.' Sic transit gloria mundi.

Watch it, ragazzi, else I'll sic my cat Heinrich on you.

Is Every Racist a White Supremacist?

'White supremacist' is becoming the Left's smear word of choice eclipsing even 'racist.' This leads to an interesting question: Is every racist a white supremacist? That depends on what you think a racist is.

On one definition, a member of a race is a racist if he harbors an irrational hatred of the members of some other race just in virtue of their membership in that other race. It follows that blacks who harbor an irrational hatred of whites just in virtue of their being white are racists. But presumably few if any of them would count as white supremacists, on any reasonable definition of the latter.

To answer the title question: it is not the case that every racist is a white supremacist; with few exceptions black racists are not white supremacists.

Now what I have just written has a tongue-in-cheek flavor. I am not seriously trying to straighten out any 'progressive' loon. For surely it would be absurd to invoke reason in the Left's lunatic asylum. It would be absurd to point out to a race-obsessed 'progressive' that 'racist' and 'white supremacist' have different meanings.

Race obsession is a cognitive aberration of leftist group-thinkers. These sick people need therapy, not refutation or calm analysis.

Be Careful with ‘Over-represent’ and ‘Under-represent’

If you fancy yourself clear-thinking, then you ought to be very careful with the word 'over-represent' and its opposite. These words are ambiguous as between normative and non-normative readings. It is just a fact that there are proportionately more Asians than blacks in the elite high schools of New York City. But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation. So don't say that the Asians are 'over-represented.' For then you are trading in confusion. You are blurring the distinction between the statement of a fact and the expression of a value judgment.

Consider the sports analogy. Asians are 'under-represented' on basketball teams. That is a fact. But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation. Enforced proportional representation would adversely affect the quality of basketball games.

Women are 'over-represented' among massage therapists and realtors in that there are more of them than men in those professions. Is that bad? Of course not. It is just a fact. And one easily explained. Women are better than men at the sorts of negotiations that real estate transactions involve. For an excellent discussion of such generic statements see my cleverly named Generic Statements. It has been my experience that liberals have a heard time wrapping their heads around generic statements. They also have a hard time grasping the logic of stereotypes.

As for the massage therapists, it is easy to understand why most of them are women. Men love to have their naked bodies rubbed in dark rooms by women. Women do not love to have their naked bodies rubbed in dark rooms by men. Capisce? By the way, both of the preceding statements are themselves generic.

If you say that women are 'under-represented' in philosophy, are you reporting a fact or reporting a fact plus bemoaning said fact? It is true that there are fewer women than men in philosophy. But it doesn't follow that this is a state of affairs that needs correction. There are perfectly non-nefarious explanations of the fact.

'Over-represent' and 'under-represent' are words best avoided because they paper over illicit inferential slides from the factual to the normative/evaluative. Is that why liberals like them?

Don’t Surrender to the Left on Language

The Left's destructiveness extends even unto language. Shoot back against the linguistic hijackers. Here's some ammo from Peter Kreeft's Socratic Logic, 3rd ed., p. 36, n. 1:

The use of the traditional inclusive generic pronoun "he" is a decision of language, not of gender justice. There are only six alternatives. (1) We could use the grammatically misleading and numerically incorrect "they." But when we say "one baby was healthier than the others because they didn't drink that milk," we do not know whether the antecedent of "they" is "one" or "others," so we don't know whether to give or take away the milk. Such language codes could be dangerous to baby's health. (2) Another alternative is the politically intrusive "in-your-face" generic "she," which I would probably use if I were an angry, politically intrusive, in-your-face woman, but I am not any of those things. (3) Changing "he" to "he or she" refutes itself in such comically clumsy and ugly revisions as the following: "What does it profit a man or woman if he or she gains the whole world but loses his or her own soul? Or what shall a man or woman give in exchange for his or her soul?" The answer is: he or she will give up his or her linguistic sanity. (4) We could also be both intrusive and clumsy by saying "she or he." (5) Or we could use the neuter "it," which is both dehumanizing and inaccurate. (6) Or we could combine all the linguistic garbage together and use "she or he or it," which, abbreviated, would sound like "sh . . . it." I believe in the equal intelligence and value of women, but not in the intelligence or value of "political correctness," linguistic ugliness, grammatical inaccuracy, conceptual confusion, or dehumanizing pronouns.

What a sexist Neanderthal this Kreeft fellow is! Send him to a re-education camp!

Find the Linguistic Howler

For all his insights about the pathologies of the modern left, Mark Lilla has not divested himself of the most ubiquitous intellectual quirk of today’s establishment liberal: He equivocates the common good with the electoral success of the Democratic Party. Lilla is not trying to convince leftists that they stand to learn anything from voters in Appalachian West Virginia or rural Missouri. He’s just trying to convince them to be able to stand their presence long enough to win their votes.

Source

"But it's a good article, Bill, and the author is obviously a youngster; why seize on a linguistic peccadillo while ignoring the content of his piece?"

Because I'm the nastiest, surliest, prickliest, language Nazi north of the Rio Grande and west of the Pecos. I love language even more than I hate libruls.

UPDATE:

Dave Bagwill comments:

J'accuse you of being a glossophile!

Guilty as charged! But I plead innocent of graphomania:

"Graphomania inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions:

An elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;

A high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;

The absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life. (From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times higher than in Israel)."
— Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1978

Kimball on Stove on Race

Roger Kimball, Who Was David Stove? Excerpt:

Stove’s essay “Racial and Other Antagonisms” is similarly emollient. He begins by noting that some degree of friction is the common if not the inevitable result when “two races of people have been in contact for long.” Only in the twentieth century, however, has such antagonism been described as a form of “prejudice.” Why? Earlier ages had the concept, and the word. Part of the reason, Stove suggests, is that by christening racial animosity “racial prejudice” we transform it into an intellectual fault, i.e., a false or irrational belief that might be cured by education—and this, Stove observes, “is a distinctly cheering thing to imply.” Alas, while it is certainly true that racial antagonism is often accompanied by false or irrational beliefs about the other race, it is by no means clear that it depends upon them. And if it doesn’t, education will be little more than liberal window dressing.

Stove’s essay on race is full of discomfiting observations. He defines “racism”—a neologism so recent, he points out, that it was not in the OED in 1971—as the belief that “some human races are inferior to others in certain respects, and that it is sometimes proper to make such differences the basis of our behaviour towards people.” Although this proposition is constantly declared to be false, Stove says, “everyone knows it is true, just as everyone knows it is true that people differ in age, sex, health, etc., and that it is sometimes proper to make these differences the basis of our behaviour towards them.” For example,

if you are recruiting potential basketball champions, you would be mad not to be more interested in American Negroes than in Vietnamese… . Any rational person, recruiting an army, will be more interested in Germans than in Italians. If what you want in people is aptitude for forming stable family-ties, you will prefer Italians or Chinese to American Negroes. Pronounced mathematical ability is more likely to occur in an Indian or a Hungarian than in an Australian Aboriginal. If you are recruiting workers, and you value docility above every other trait in a worker, you should prefer Chinese to white Americans. And so on.

Stove readily admitted that some of these traits may be culturally rather than genetically determined. But he went on to observe that “they are still traits which are statistically associated with race, well enough, to make race a rational guide in such areas of policy as recruitment or immigration.” As I say, David Stove would not have been made to feel welcome at many American colleges or universities.

……………………………………..

It can't be racist if it's true. Now what Stove says above is true, except when he says that "everyone knows it is true." There are people who sincerely believe it to be false. But surely most of us know that it is true even if we won't admit it publicly. In any case, what Stove says above is true, and it can't be racist if its true, whence it follows that Stove violates ordinary usage when he defines 'racism' as he does. And that is a foolish thing to do. Meaning is tied to use, and only a linguistic Don Quixote tilts against the windmills of prevalent usage. To shift metaphors, some words and phrases are just not candidates for semantic rehabilitation.

Stove needs a different word. Whatever word that is, it won't be 'racism.' 'Racism' is currently used to label an attitude of irrational hatred of members of a race not one's own precisely because they are members of a race not one's own.

It is obvious that one's acceptance of the Stovian truths does not entail that he bears any racial animosity to anyone.

I have just engaged in some clear thinking and truth-telling. But what's the point in a world becoming stupider and crazier by the day?

Lukáš Novák on Use and Mention

From a comment in a now fast-receding earlier thread:

An editor trying to impose a clear use-mention distinction on authors soon realises that most certainly words can be both used and mentioned, and that it is not inherently wrong. BTW, the Scholastics believed that in the case of the so-called material supposition it is regularly the case: cf. "man is a noun" (note the lack of quotes around "man"); and the apparatus of material supposition cannot be always equivalently "translated" into the "quoting" convention.

There are also some interesting cases involving quotes:

– Nietzsche said that "God is dead".

Here the phrase "God is dead" is both used to complete the sentence, and mentioned as that what Nietzsche literally said.

Scare quotes:

– I cannot wait to hear and refute Peter's "arguments".

"Arguments" is both used to refer disparagingly to what Peter presents as arguments, and mentioned as the word Peter actually uses.

To be clear, the issue is not whether words can be both used and mentioned, but whether some words can be both used and mentioned in the same sentence or clause or phrase. The answer, I think, is yes. The challenge is to find crystal-clear examples.

When I am quoting an actual person's words, I use double quotation marks. These are genuine quotation marks. When I am not quoting, but mentioning a word, phrase, clause, or sentence, I use single 'quotation' marks as in:

'Boston' is disyllabic.

Please note that the indentation, as just performed, serves a mentioning function but without the messiness of additional 'quotation' marks.

Besides quoting and mentioning there is also sneering/scaring. For sneering/scaring I use single 'quotation' marks as in

There is nothing liberal about contemporary 'liberals.'

and

I use single 'quotation' marks to show that a word is being misused or analogically extended.

You can begin to see from this what a punctilious pedant and language Nazi I am. There are other niceties and puzzles relating to all of this, but let's proceed to Dr. Novak's examples, starting with the last one. This is a very interesting case, but it doesn't seem to me to be a totally clear example of a word being both used and mentioned. Simplify the example:

Peter's 'arguments' are fallacious.

No doubt, 'arguments' is being used in this sentence. Or rather, " 'arguments' " is being used in this sentence. But I don't see that it is being mentioned. The inverted commas signal that the word is being used in an extended or improper way to refer to something that really ought not be called an argument. An extended use is not a mention.

Novak's second example is:

Nietzsche said that "God is dead."

But this is not a good English sentence, and so does not constitute a clear example. One must write either

(a) Nietzsche said that God is dead

(b) Nietzsche said, "God is dead."

In (a), 'that God is dead' is being used to refer to the content of Nietzsche's assertion, while in (b) the sentence Nietzsche wrote is mentioned.

Novak's first example is:

Man is a noun.

I'm sorry, but that is just false. 'Man' is a noun, not man. 'Man' is monosyllabic, but no man is monosyllabic. 'Man' is a word, but no man is a word.

Finally, an example that seems to work:

Big Bill Broonzy was so-called because of his size.

Clearly the name is being used to refer to a black bluesman. But that he was called 'Big Bill Broonzy' because of his size is also conveyed by the sentence. The name is therefore both used and (implicitly) mentioned in the same sentence.

You are not a Racist if You Speak the Truth about Race

My title answers the question I posed in my post Are the Police Racist? I asked:

If a statement about race is true, is one a racist for making it? Is one a racist for reporting the following?

Homicide numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–2005 indicate that young African-American males account for homicide victims at levels that are ten to 20 times greater than their proportion of the population and account for homicide offenders at levels that are 15 to 35 times greater than their proportion of the population.

I received two intelligent responses one in agreement, the other in disagreement. Here is the first:

[A leftist I am reading] argues, and this touches your point, that propaganda can consist of claims that are true and made sincerely. Such as ‘there are Muslims among us’, which is true, and does not even communicate something false (namely that Muslims are inherently dangerous to others), but rather is misleading. ‘It simply does not follow that the flawed ideological belief that makes some claim effective as propaganda is expressed or communicated in that claim’. I think he would treat the statement you quote in the same way.

Homicide numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–2005 indicate that young African-American males account for homicide victims at levels that are ten to 20 times greater than their proportion of the population and account for homicide offenders at levels that are 15 to 35 times greater than their proportion of the population.

Is that true? Damned right. Is it made sincerely? Surely so. But it is effective propaganda because misleading, according to him. Bizarrely, he says that the word ‘welfare’ does not appear on any banned list, yet always conveys ‘a problematic social meaning’. Even a word like ‘mother’ is problematic (has a ‘harmful social meaning’) whenever it is used. F–k me.

BV: Leftists subscribe to the hermeneutics of suspicion. Thus they refuse to take what conservatives say at face value as expressing a sincerely held opinion based in empirical fact. If I cite the FBI statistic, I am speaking in a 'code' using 'dog whistles' that other conservatives can hear. So if I say that blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites, what I am really saying is that blacks have to be kept in their place or hunted down. I am legitimating their alleged unjust 'mass incarceration.' I am condoning the alleged murder of the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown of Ferguson. (The truth, of course, is that these two youths were not murdered but brought about their own deaths by their immoral, illegal, and extremely foolish behavior.) Thus leftists ignore the manifest meaning of what the conservative says and seek out some latent 'ideological' meaning, where ideology has the Marxist sense of a legitimation of existing relations of power and domination.

It has been said, correctly in the main, that for a conservative, leftists are wrong, whereas for a leftist, conservatives are evil. It is because they regard us as evil that they refuse to accord us respect as rational interlocutors with a point of view worth examining. This is why they exclude conservative speakers and shout down those who somehow make it onto campus. This is why they pepper us with purely emotive epithets such as 'fascist' and the 'phobe' constructions which are designed to impugn our sanity.

So when I cite the FBI stat to explain why blacks are 'over-represented' in the prison system I am accused of retailing racist propaganda when I am simply speaking the truth.

I am one of those conservatives who think that leftists (including most contemporary liberals) are not merely wrong but morally defective people. They deny the plain truth and slander their opponents. They don't value free speech. They have no understanding of the values of the university. They enable and apologize for barbarians.

Part of what fuels their destructive worldview is the false empirical belief that every group is equally competent and qualified at everything so that if one group does worse than another the explanation has to be that they have been put upon, held back, oppressed, marginalized, victimized. So women and men are innately just as good at the STEM disciplines — which is false — and if you suggest otherwise as James Damore did, you lose your job at Google. Even more absurd is the belief that men and women as groups are equally competent in all combat roles in the military and that to suggest otherwise is to promote unjust discrimination.

My theory is that the Christian metaphysical belief that we are all equal before God as persons got secularized after the death of God (in Nietzsche's sense) into a false empirical belief that we are all equal in empirical fact, and that indications to the contrary can be explained away in terms of racism, sexism, ageism, etc.

The other response I got in effect points out that truths about race and ethnicity can be asserted with scurrilous intent. Now that of course is true. I've made the point myself more than once.

Suppose I encounter a man in a wheel chair, a man without legs. If I say, "You, sir, have no legs!" I speak the truth, but commit a low-level moral offense. There are truths the enunciation of which is morally contraindicated in certain circumstances.

So of course a racist could cite the FBI statistic in a scurrilous way.

But the issue is precisely this: if you speak the truth about race it does not follow that you are a racist. For your intentions may be good and what you say may be something that needs to be heard.

Is Trump Divisive?

To say of Trump or anyone that he is divisive is to say that he promotes (political) division. But there is no need to promote it these days since we already have plenty of it. We are a deeply and perhaps irreparably divided nation. So it is not right to say that Trump is divisive: he is standing on one side of an already existing divide.

Trump did not create the divide between those who stand for the rule of law and oppose sanctuary cities, porous borders, and irresponsibly lax legal immigration policies. What he did is take up these issues fearlessly, something his milque-toast colleagues could not bring themselves to do.

And he has met with some success: illegal immigration is down some 50%.

Liberals call him a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe. That they engage in this slander shows that the nation is bitterly divided over fundamental questions.

Too often journalistic word-slingers shoot first and ask questions never. Wouldn't it be nice if they thought before their lemming-like and knee-jerk deployment of such adjectives as 'divisive'?

Language matters.

Define or Drop

For leftists, words are weapons. If you are a lefty, and you disagree, then I invite you to define 'fascist,' 'racist,' 'white supremacist,' and the rest of the epithets in your arsenal. Define 'em or drop 'em.

Show us that you are people of good will.

Suppose I point out the incompatibility of Sharia with Western values and you call me an 'Islamophobe.' You thereby demonstrate that you are not a person of good will. A person of good will does not dismiss the arguments of his rational interlocutor as driven by a phobia. Here is a good illustration of what I mean when I say that for leftists, words are weapons, or as I also like to say, "semantic bludgeons."

Although righties are far less offensive in this regard, they too must be held to the standard of define or drop.

There were those who called Obama a socialist. But there can be no reasonable discussion of whether he is or isn't without a preliminary clarification of the term. If a socialist is one who advocates the collective or government ownership of the means of production, then I know of no statement of Obama's in which he advocated any such thing.

Am I being soft on one of the worst presidents in American history? No, I am just being fair.

Frequently Misused Expressions

This is an updated version of a language rant first published in October 2013.

……………

You've heard of the Soup Nazi. I'm the Language Nazi. And that's my cat, Heinrich.

1. Toe the line, not: tow the line.

2. Tough row to hoe, not: tough road to hoe.

3. Rack one's brains, not: wrack one's brains.

4. Wrack and ruin, not: rack and ruin.

5. Flout the law, not: flaunt the law.

6. Give advice, not: give advise. "He advised her to take his advice cum grano salis."

7. Cum grano salis, not: cum grano Sallust. (This one's a joke; I just made it up.)

8. One and the same; not: one in the same.

9. Same thing, not: same difference. One of those moronic expressions that is so bad it's good. Tom: "That's a firefly!" Dick: "Its a glowbug!" Jethro: "Same difference!" This is not to suggest that there aren't correct uses of 'same difference.'

10. Regardless, not: irregardless. Say 'irregardless' and you probably chew tobacco.

11. I couldn't care less, not: I could care less. Almost as moronic as (9).

Yahoos seem naturally to gravitate toward double negative constructions which they use as intensifiers. For example, 'I can't get no satisfaction' to mean can't get any. 'No' here is an intensifier not a negator. "Nothing ain't worth nothing, but it's free." (Kris Kristofferson) This double negation as intensification is probably what is going on in (9) and (10) as well.

In each case, though, the speaker conveys his meaning. So does it matter whether one speaks and writes correctly? Does it matter whether one walks down the street with one's pants half-way down one's butt?

In the Italian language, the double negative construction is not only not incorrect, but mandatory. That ain't no shit. Italians are famously good at doing nothing. La dolce vita and all that. Dolce far niente (sweet to do nothing) is a favorite Italian saying. My paternal grandfather Alfonso had it emblazoned on his pergola; me, I've been meaning to do the same for my stoa. I just haven't gotten around to it.

'We do nothing' in grammatically correct Italian is: Noi non facciamo niente. Literally: we don't do nothing.

Theme music: Too Much of Nothing

Addenda

12. Tenter hooks, not: tender hooks. (Via Monterey Tom)

13. Old fashioned, not: old fashion.

14. Ceteris paribus, not: ceterus paribus, which confuses the ‘-ibus’ ending with nominative. It is an ablative absolute construction ‘with all else equal’. (Via London Ed. Latin: Don't throw it if you don't know it.)

Harry Binswanger on Why Language Matters

I am not a Libertarian or an Objectivist. But I do agree with much of what Harry Binswanger says here. (HT: C. Cathcart) I've been harping on similar themes for years. I'll pull some quotations.

. . . since words *are* the tools of language, they are the tools of thought. That means you must resist unto death using the terminology of your enemy. The side that controls language controls thought.

Or as I have said more than once, "He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate."

This is why it is utter folly for a conservative to acquiesce in such misbegotten terminological innovations as 'Islamophobia' and 'Islamophobe.' These are question-begging leftist coinages the whole purpose of which is to stymie serious discussion. A phobia is an irrational fear. To accuse someone of being an Islamophobe is to imply that he is irrational and beyond the pale of rational discussion, when it is most eminently rational to sound the alarm concerning Islam.

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a 'liberal'!

As for 'liberal,' Binswanger talks sense:

"Liberal" is another word that is booby-trapped. Joe Lieberman is the last living liberal–a museum piece, really. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Krugman, and the rest are not liberals but Leftists, if you want a shorter term than "anti-capitalists." Today's Leftists have nothing of substance in common with those we used to know as "liberals"–JFK, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson.

The word "liberal" derives from "liberty." Liberty is the last thing on the mind of today's Leftists. They seek to stamp out not only economic freedom but freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Just make a visit to your local university. The term "liberal" should never be used for people whose driving ideology is, to use a proper term, statism.

Exactly right. Accurate terms to describe our ideological opponents are leftist, statist, and totalitarian, but not progressive. If you use 'liberal,' do as I do and put sneer quotes around it. There is little that is liberal about contemporary 'liberals.' Is that not obvious by now?

It is the totalitarian nature of the Left and of Islam that helps explain what is otherwise rather puzzling, namely, the fact that leftists are tolerant of Islam even in its most violent and anti-liberal manifestations but decidedly less tolerant of Christianity which, at the present time, is no threat to anyone. For a thorough discussion, see Why the Left Will Not Admit the Threat of Radical Islam.

Words matter because words stand for concepts–abstract ideas that join certain things and separate others. Your ideological enemy is your ideological enemy in part because he divides the world up differently from you. He works with different concepts, different classifications. Where you see the opposition of freedom vs. government force, he sees the opposition of "exploitation" vs. "equality." Where you see earning vs. freeloading, he sees "luck" vs. "compassion."

Even little, innocuous concepts are game-changers. Take "access." Is there some national, collective problem in the fact that some people don't have "access" to quality medical care? What if we rephrase the question to be: do some people have the right to force other people to pay for their medical care? Sounds a little different, doesn't it? I don't have "access" to your car, your home, and your bank account. That's a disgrace!

However one comes down on the health care issue one ought to understand that there is a serious underlying question here that ought to be out in the open and discussed: Is there a right to be provided by the government, and thus by taxpayers, with health care services?

For an unpacking of the issue, see A Right to Health Care?

All intellectually honest people ought to admit that it is wrong to obliterate this issue by linguistic hijacking and terminological fiat. But that is what 'liberals' do. Ergo, etc.

Concision at War with Redundancy

One of my faults as a writer is that I am prolix. I almost wrote ‘excessively prolix,’ which would have illustrated the fault in question. Piling ‘excessively’ onto ‘prolix’ would not only have been unnecessary, but would also have suggested that one can be prolix in moderation. But wordiness is a vice, and vices should be extirpated, not moderated.

Some years back, The Wall Street Journal described itself as “the daily diary of the American dream.” A delightful pleonasm: ‘diary’ derives from the Latin dies, day. A daily diary is like one of Al Franken’s lying liars. I learned recently that ‘journal’ also derives from Latin dies even though they have no letters in common. A fact like that excites a guy like me. Dies gave rise to diurnus, which became the Italian giornale and the French journal, passing into English as ‘journal’ circa 1590. (Vide Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd ed., 2004, p. 400) By the way, this is a fascinating book, and I recommend it.

Here are some other examples of redundant expressions, culled from Joseph M. Williams, Style: Toward Grace and Clarity (Chicago, 1990, p. 116): past memories, basic fundamentals, true facts, important essentials, future plans, personal beliefs, consensus of opinion, sudden crisis, terrible tragedy, end result, final outcome, initial preparation, free gift. No doubt some of these are disputable. Suppose you set aside six months to prepare for a marathon. You begin by running 30 miles per week, gradually working up to 45 mile weeks. It would make sense to say that your initial preparation was less demanding than the later phases of your preparation. There is no redundancy here.

And what about future plans? ‘Plan’ is ambiguous as between the act of planning and its object. No doubt the object of planning is always later than the act of planning, just as the object of remembering is always earlier than the act of remembering. Hence ‘future plan’ is redundant when used to refer to the object of planning. But it is not redundant when used to refer to the act of planning. An act of planning can lie in the future, in the present, or in the past. If every use of ‘future plan’ were redundant, then every use of ‘past plan’ and ‘present plan’ would be oxymoronic. But it is no oxymoron to say, ‘My past plans all went unrealized,’ or ‘My present plan is to sell the vacation house.’

By similar reasoning, one should be able to convince oneself that past memories has non-redundant uses. An old man might complain, ‘My present memories are not as vivid as my past memories.’ This is not redundant because an act of remembering can lie in the past.

One conclusion to be drawn is that good writing is not a mechanical affair: it cannot be reduced to rules and regulations, algorithms and checklists. Did you catch ‘rules and regulations’? That is a redundancy and I used it purposely to test you. ‘Regulation’ is from the Latin regula, meaning rule. There is also the connection to rex, regis, king, ruler. And so on and so forth.