Language Matters – Page 25 – Maverick Philosopher

‘Politicization,’ National Debt, and the Paris Attacks

The Republicans have been accused of 'politicizing' the debt crisis. But how can you politicize what is inherently political? The debt in question is the debt of the federal government. Since a government is a political entity, questions concerning federal debts are political questions. As inherently political, such questions cannot be politicized.

If to reify is illicitly to treat as a thing that which is not a thing, then to politicize is illicitly to treat as political what is not political. Since governmental debt questions are 'already' political, they cannot be politicized.

Some commentators are now claiming that the Paris attacks are being 'politicized.' But again, how can something that is inherently political be 'politicized'? An attack by a terrorist entity upon a Western democracy is clearly a political event.

Someone might respond to me as follows. "I see your point, but when people say that an event is being politicized, what they mean is that it is being exploited for partisan advantage. Thus those opposed to Muslim immigration will 'use' the Paris attacks to support their case against such immigration."

I agree that this is what most people mean by 'politicization.' But then what is wrong with it? Nothing as far as I can see.

We must learn the lessons from these terrible events. One lesson of Paris, or rather a confirmation of a lesson that already should have been learned, is that radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, pick your term) is a grave threat to civilization. French civilization, and European civilization generally, borders on the decadent; but it is still to be preferred to the fanaticism, tribalism, and backwardness of the Islamic world. That is what we call an understatement.

So I say we need more 'politicization' in the second sense of the term. We need more 'exploitation' of such horrific crimes.

And there is a bridge from Paris to Mizzou.

In a characteristically piss-poor OpEd piece in the NYT entitled Exploiting Paris, Frank Bruni whines, "Using Paris to delegitimize them is puerile." He is referring to the 'safe space' girly-girls and crybullies.

This shows how willfully stupid he and his colleagues are. (Not all of them, of course: Douthat and Brooks are worth reading.) They fail to grasp the connection between the assault on free speech by the Islamists and that by the crybullies and pampered fascists of our elite universities. And they will never own up to the obvious fact that the Left serves to enable radical Islam.

Both are incredibly destructive forces that attack the foundations of genuine civilization. Observe also that the Left is not only destructive, but insanely self-destructive: they think they will use the Islamists for their ends; but they will be the first of the infidels to be slaughtered.

Reverse Hijacking of Liberal-Leftist Lingo

Leftists are consummate linguistic hijackers. I've been making this point since the inception of this weblog back in aught-four. I won't repeat my examples. It just now occurred to me that a useful tactic in the culture war might be the reverse hijacking of liberal-leftist lingo.

I have done this three times in the last few days without conscious subsumption under the italicized rubric.

Thus 'Black Lives Matter' gets twisted into 'Black Lies Matter' to highlight the fact that the distortions, falsehoods, and outright lies of many blacks and their liberal-left enablers get people killed, mostly blacks, and undermine the rule of law.

'Safe space' and 'trigger warning' are easily mocked as I did a few hours ago.

All's fair in love and war, and this is a war, muchachos. Make no mistake about it. The behavior of leftists shows that they see it as a war, as witness their relentless smearing of Dr. Ben Carson. They practice without scruple the politics of personal destruction. They did it to Sarah Palin in an especially vile manner, and to Herman Cain. If they see politics as a war, we can't see it as a gentlemanly debate. Mockery and derision are potent weapons as Saul Alinsky recognized and they must be employed to attack the enemies of the republic and to energize those who, for whatever reason, are impermeable to calm and learned disquisitions.

But you must also have rigorous arguments and calm disquisitions at the ready for those who are capable of processing them.

Moralizing

'Moralizing' is what liberals call moral discourse, just as 'judgmentalism' is what they call the making of moral judgments. 'Hypocrite' is what they call those who preach high standards.

Am I being fair? Fair enough. You are free to nuance the point to your satisfaction so long as you don't miss the truth behind my jabs.

Is ‘Too’ a Sexist Word?

Here. (HT: Karl White) The culture of narcissism on full display. Did this lass major in Grievance Studies?

In other news, Melissa Harris-Perry objects to 'hard worker' because it supposedly demeans the experience of slaves.

And then there is Dr. Ben Carson who has liberals foaming at the mouth again, this time over his sensible remarks on slavery and abortion.

The Culture of Narcissism is a book by Christopher Lasch. I read it when it first came out in 1979. I recommend it to you.

The Great ‘Sanctuary City’ Slander?

Remove the question mark from the above caption and you have the title for a New York Times editorial for 16 October. Here are the first three paragraphs with my comments interspersed:

Lawmakers in Washington and around the country are in an uproar over what they derisively call “sanctuary cities.” These are jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, or try in other ways to protect unauthorized immigrants from unjust deportation.

"Derisively call"? Here is a well-known leftist tactic. Words and phrases that have long been in use, have clear meanings, are descriptive rather than emotive, and are therefore innocuous, are given such labels as 'derisive,' 'insulting,' demeaning,' 'racist,' and so on. 'Anchor baby,' 'illegal alien,' and 'Obamacare' are three examples that come immediately to mind. As for 'anchor baby,' Alan Colmes recently opined on The O'Reilly Factor that it is demeaning because it likens the babies of illegal border crossers to weights that place a burden on American society. I kid you not. That's what our boy said. But the term implies no such thing. Anchor babies are so-called because, if you will permit me to change the metaphor, they provide a foothold in the U.S. for their illegal alien parents. This is because, on current law, anyone born within the boundaries of the U. S. is automatically a citizen of the U. S. Now whether this is or ought to be an entailment of Section 1 of Amendment XIV of the U.S. Constitution is an important question, but not one for the present occasion.

Notice in the second sentence of the first paragraph the phrase "unjust deportation." If you will excuse the expression in this context, it takes cojones to call unjust the lawful deportation of illegal aliens. Cojones or chutzpah, one.

The Senate is voting Tuesday on a bill from David Vitter of Louisiana to punish these cities by denying them federal law-enforcement funds. The House passed its version [hyperlink suppressed] in July. North Carolina’s Legislature has passed a bill forbidding sanctuary policies. Lawmakers in Michigan and Texas are seeking similar laws.

This a distortion of Vitter's proposal. The truth: "Vitter’s legislation would withhold certain federal funding from sanctuary states or cities that fail to comply with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued detainer requests for illegal aliens." (Emphasis added)

These laws are a false fix for a concocted problem. They are based on the lie, now infecting the Republican presidential campaign, that all unauthorized immigrants are dangerous criminals who must be subdued by extraordinary means.

It takes unmitigated gall to claim that your opponents are lying, when you are lying. I'd like to know who among Republicans has claimed that ALL illegal aliens are dangerous criminals. So who is slandering whom here?

At this point I stopped reading. Three paragraphs, four howlers: first a trade-mark leftist act of linguistic obfuscation, then an outright lie, then a distortion of the truth, then another outright lie.

But of course few if any contemporary liberals will agree with what I have just written. This leads us beyond this particular issue to a strange, ominous, and yet fascinating development in American life which of course has been long in the making: we can't agree on much of anything any more. We are, unbelievably, arguing over what really are beneath discussion, over issues that ought to be non-issues. And every year it gets worse. Suing gun manufacturers? Aussie-style gun confiscation? No photo ID at polling places? Sanctuary cities? Social Security benefits for illegal aliens?

Now you can perhaps understand why I often refer to contemporary liberals as morally and intellectually obtuse. There is really nothing reasonably to debate on these and many other, not all, current hot topics. Those who think otherwise and are willing to use the power of the State to enforce their crazy and deleterious ideas are making a very strong argument, nolens volens, for Second Amendment rights.

Undocumented Workers and Illegal Aliens

“He Who Hesitates is Lost”

As you know, Yogi Berra, master of the malapropism, died in September. In the Berra spirit, I cooked up the following during last night's troubled sleep:

Said by me to Berra in the presence of Peter: He who hesitates is lost.

Berra: You mean Peter?

What is Berra failing to understand?

(I would continue with this, but I am presently under assault by some nasty flu bug. And last night's whisky cure did no good at all.

If I said to Wittgenstein, "I feel like shit warmed-over," he would shoot back: "You have no idea what shit feels like, fresh-cooked or warmed-over."

He was one serious dude.

How Not to Define ‘Atheism’

Nonsense, say I.

Note first that atheism cannot be identified with the lack of theistic belief, i.e., the mere absence of the belief that God or a god exists, for that would imply that cabbages and tire irons are atheists. Note second that it won't do to say that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons, for there are persons incapable of forming beliefs. Charitably interpreted, then, the idea must be that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons capable of forming and maintaining beliefs.

But this cannot be right either, and for a very simple reason. Atheism is something people discuss, debate, argue for, argue against, draw conclusions from, believe, disbelieve, entertain, and so on. Atheism, in other words, is a PROPOSITION: it is something that can be either true or false, that can be the object of such propositional attitudes as belief and disbelief, that can stand in such logical relations to other propositions as entailment, consistency, and inconsistency. But one cannot discuss, debate, argue for, . . . believe, etc. a lack of something. Atheism redefined as the lack of theistic belief is a PROPERTY of certain persons. Now a proposition is not a property. Atheism is a proposition and for this reason cannot be redefined as a property.

Someone who understands this might nevertheless maintain that 'negative atheism' is a proposition, namely, the proposition that there are people capable of forming and maintaining beliefs who simply lack the belief that God exists. Admittedly, one could use 'atheism' as the label for the proposition that there are such people. But then atheism so defined would be trivially true. After all, no one denies that there are people capable of beliefs who lack the belief that God exists. Furthermore, if 'atheism' is so defined, then theism would be the view that there are persons capable of belief who have the belief that God exists. But then theism, too, would be trivially true. And if both are true, then they cannot be logical contradictories of each other as they must be if the terms are to mean anything useful.

Now what is the point of the terminological mischief perpetrated by these 'negative atheists'? It is terminological mischief because we have just seen it ruin two perfectly good words, 'atheism' and 'theism.' If atheism and theism are worth discussing, then atheism is the view that no gods exist and theism is the view that one or more gods exist.

The point of the cyberpunk definition is to avoid being pinned down, to avoid being committed to a positive thesis. But of course the claim that there is no God is a positive claim about Reality, namely, the claim that Reality is godless. And so our cyberpunk commits himself nolens volens.

‘Homophobia’ and ‘Carniphobia’

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal! I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic ground. So we ought to oppose resolutely the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

Take 'homophobia.'

A phobia is a fear, but not every fear is a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear. One who argues against the morality of homosexual practices, or gives reasons for opposing same-sex marriage is precisely — presenting arguments, and not expressing any phobia. The arguments may or may not be cogent. But they are expressive of reason, and are intended to appeal to the reason of one's interlocutor. To dismiss them as an expression of a phobia show a lack of respect for reason and for the persons who proffer the arguments.

There are former meat-eaters who can make an impressive case against the eating of meat. Suppose that, instead of addressing their arguments, one denounces the former carnivores as 'carniphobes.' Can you see what is wrong with that? These people have a reasoned position. Their reasoning may be more or less cogent, their premises more or less disputable. But the one thing they are not doing is expressing an irrational fear of eating meat. Many of them like the stuff and dead meat inspires no fear in them whatsoever.

The point should be obvious: 'homophobia' is just as objectionable as 'carniphobia.' People who use words like these are attempting to close off debate, to bury a legitimate issue beneath a crapload of PeeCee jargon. So it is not just that 'homophobe' and 'homophobia' are question-begging epithets; they are question-burying epithets.

And of course 'Islamophobia' and cognates are other prime examples. Once again, a phobia is an irrational fear. But fear of radical Islam is not at all irrational. You are a dolt if you use these terms, and a double dolt if you are a conservative.

Language matters.

Why does language matter? Because clear thinking matters, and language is the medium of thought.

Why does clear thinking matter? Because clear thinking is truth-conducive.

Why does truth matter? Because living according to the truth is conducive to human flourishing.

Neologism: A Merton

A merton is a person who doesn't distinguish between studying a subject and writing a book about it.

Cf. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. III, 136: "Thought of writing a book on Columbia under Spain . . ..") In his short life Merton published some 60 books, some of them good, some of them but attempts to work his way into a subject.

Why Write?

A reader sends me the following quotation from a Richard Mitchell:

I have never yet written anything, long or short, that did not surprise me. That is, for me at least, the greatest worth of writing, which is only incidentally a way of telling others what you think. Its first use is for the making of what you think, for the discovery of understanding, an act that happens only in language.

I surmise that the Richard Mitchell in question is The Underground Grammarian.

I agree with Mitchell's thought subject to a minor qualification. The achievement of understanding is not possible without language, but it does not, in every instance, require writing, or even speech. Nevertheless, the perfection of (discursive) understanding is possible only by writing.

Second to the careful articulation of one's thought in written language comes that rare event called 'dialogue,' in which two sympathetic minds use each other to arrive at a truth that transcends both.

‘Traditional Marriage’ or ‘Natural Marriage’?

This from long-time reader, Bill Tingley:

As always, Bill, I find reading your blog enlightening and enjoyable. I note you are using the term "traditional marriage" to refer to marriage. Now that the Supreme Court has redefined marriage as nothing more than a civil union, the meaning of the word "marriage" is in turmoil. So we do need a term to mean what "marriage" has always meant until the day before yesterday. Instead of "traditional marriage", I suggest "natural marriage". "Natural" more accurately conveys what is essential to marriage than "traditional" does. After all, everything that can be said to be traditional about marriage follows what is natural about it, sexual complementarity. More than that, natural law informs us that the good of sexual complementarity is actualized in marriage. Nor does it hurt that the rhetorical force of "natural" pushes buttons that confuse the Leftists and denies them their knee-jerk response to all that is labeled traditional.

Now that the Left has destroyed the word 'marriage,' we need a word to distinguish the genuine article from the leftist innovation. I agree with Tingley about this. I suggest 'traditional marriage.' He suggests 'natural marriage.' His reason for the superiority of the latter over the former is that:

. . . everything that can be said to be traditional about marriage follows what is natural about it, sexual complementarity.

I think this overlooks something important, namely, that marriage, while grounded in the biological complementarity of male and female human animals, and essentially so grounded, is a social institution. So there is more to marriage than the merely natural. For this reason, I prefer 'traditional marriage' to 'natural marriage.'

To clarify this, a brief look at the relation between the natural-biological and the social-cultural is in order.

Consider three situations, each a kind of 'intercourse.' (1) A man and a woman playing chess with each other. (2) A man and a woman just copulating with each other. (3) A man and a woman getting married to each other and consummating their marriage.

Ad (1). Chess has no objective reality outside of the system of rules or laws that constitute it, and these are of a conventional nature. In this regard, the laws of chess are nothing like the laws of nature.* They are not descriptive of culture-independent occurrences. Nor are the rules of chess prescriptively regulative of processes and transactions external to them, in the way traffic laws regulate vehicular processes, and laws against fraud regulate business transactions by setting up norms that one ought to follow when one drives or does business. The rules of chess are constitutive of the game, not regulative of some antecedent process, and what they constitute is something of a wholly conventional nature. Chess is a social artifact in toto; there is nothing natural about it. A man and a woman playing chess are engaged in a social interaction with no natural or physical process underpinning it. Of course, the touching and moving of pieces are physical processes, but there is nothing in the physical world corresponding to an instance of chessic intercourse in the way there is something in nature corresponding to a description of photosynthesis.

Ad (2). Brute copulation is at the opposite extreme. Copulation is a physical process whether it is done in marriage or outside marriage, whether it is done lovingly or rapaciously. Brute copulation has nothing social or cultural about it. It makes sense to say that chess is a social construct or a social artifact; it makes no sense to say that brute copulation is a social construct or social artifact.

I am assuming a healthy-minded realism. I am assuming that there is an important distinction between what John Searle calls brute facts and what he calls institutional facts. It is a brute fact that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth or that two animals are copulating. It is an institutional fact that Barack Obama is POTUS and Michelle Obama FLOTUS. A woman's being pregnant is a brute fact; a child's being illegitimate is an institutional fact. The existence of gold, the metal Au, is a brute fact; the existence of money is an institutional fact even if the money is realized in gold coins. "Brute facts exist independently of any human institutions; institutional facts can exist only within human institutions." (The Construction of Social Reality, p. 27) It follows from these definitions that the consummation of a marriage, even though it necessarily involves sexual intercourse, is an institutional fact.

(Searle's use of 'brute fact' is a bit idiosyncratic. I would say, and I think most philosophers would agree, that a brute fact is a contingently obtaining state of affairs the obtaining of which has no causal or other explanation. If an atheist says that the universe just happens to exist without cause or reason, then he is saying that its existence is a brute fact in my sense. Of course, it is also a brute fact in Searle's sense. Only a leftist loon would maintain that the physical universe is a social construct. That the moon has craters, however, is not a brute fact in my sense though it is in Searle's inasmuch as it is not an institutional fact. That astronomical distances are measured in light-years is an institutional fact, but not the distances themselves!)

Ad (3). Marriage is between chess and brute copulation.** Chess is whatever FIDE or the United States Chess Federation says it is. Marriage cannot be what any legislative body, or bunch of judges playing legislators, says it is. For it is grounded essentially in the natural fact of human sexual complementarity. Chess is entirely a social construct; marriage is not.

On the other hand, marriage, unlike brute copulation, has a social side: it is after all a contract. For this reason, I prefer 'traditional marriage' over 'natural marriage.' Strictly speaking, there is no natural marriage: non-humans mate and reproduce and cohabit, but they don't marry.

____________________________________

*An interesting question is whether 'laws of chess' can only be construed as a subjective genitive: the laws of chess are chess's laws, not laws about something external to these laws. But 'laws of nature' can also be construed as an objective genitive: the laws of nature are laws about something external to them, namely the natural world.

**And if I may be permitted a joke, too much chess and any extramural copulation, brute or not, can destroy a marriage.

On ‘Disenfranchise’ and Hillary’s Will to Power

According to the WSJ, Hillary Clinton thinks that Republican-controlled states have “systematically and deliberately” tried to “disempower and disenfranchise” voters.

Here is another clear example of how leftists distort language for their political advantage.

To disenfranchise is to deprive of a right, in particular, the right to vote. But only some people have the right to vote. Felons and children do not have the right to vote, nor do non-citizens. Not yet, anyway. You do not have the right to vote in a certain geographical area simply because you are a sentient being residing in that area. Otherwise, my cats would have the right to vote. Now a requirement that one prove that one has the right to vote is not to be confused with a denial of the right to vote.

My right to vote is one thing, my ability to prove I have the right another. If, on a given occasion, I cannot prove that I am who I claim to be, then I won't be able to exercise my right to vote on that occasion; but that is not to say that I have been 'disenfranchised.' For I haven't be deprived of my right to vote; I have merely been prevented from exercising my right on that occasion due to my inability do prove my identity.

But for a leftist, the end justifies the means; all's fair in love and war; and politics is war. This explains why they have no scruples about hijacking the English language.

It is not that Hillary does not know what 'disenfranchise' means; it is that she will do anything to win, including destroying what ought to be a neutral framework within which to conduct our debates.

Language matters because he who controls the language controls the debate.

Obama and Pigeon Chess

I've said it before: beware of unsourced 'quotations.' An über-conservative correspondent forwarded me the following:

"Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon." "The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game."
~Vladimir Putin

Now Obama is indeed a feckless fool, and a disaster for the country and the world. It is a blot upon the American electorate that this mendacious incompetent was elected and then, horribile dictu, re-elected. I hope we can all agree on that. Mockery and derision are appropriate weapons to deploy against him and his supporters. But we who stand up for truth ought to be especially scrupulous about getting things right. So I ran the 'quotation' past Snopes.com whereat it is plausibly maintained that Putin said no such thing. There I snagged this nifty graphic:

A Checkered Past

Having recently compared two lunch companions to each other in point of having checkered pasts, but aware of recent shifts in the meaning of the phrase, and not wishing to give offense, I quizzed one of them on the meaning of 'has a checkered past' as applied to a woman and to a man. He replied that it suggests that the woman was a prostitute and the man a crook.

That answer is not wrong and accords with current usage. If you listen carefully to how 'checkered past,' 'checkered career,' and similar expressions are now used, I think you will find that they are often used with a pejorative connotation. But the phrase originally had no such negative connotation as far as I can tell. My old Webster's defines checker, v.t., as to vary with contrasting elements or situations and gives the example of a checkered career as a racer. Nothing pejorative about that: the racer's career had its ups and downs. Or one might describe a man whose 20s were spent in the Jesuits, his 30s teaching philosophy, his 40s as a soldier of fortune, and his 50's as an exterminator of insects as having had a checkered past. Nothing pejorative about that either.

Only a liberal or an idiot thinks that change qua change is good. And so I hold to the old way of using 'checkered past.' But I can do so only if my language mates let me. Like it or not, meaning is tied to use. If the phrase comes to be used in an exclusively pejorative way, then I must conform to the change if I want to communicate with the vulgar as opposed to display my erudition among the learned.

It is too bad that we are at the mercy of the masses in so many things, though not in all things. I have no objection to the phrase 'male chauvinism.' But if enough come to substitute 'chauvinism' for it, then the former has been rendered redundant and the latter destroyed. And that would be a change for the worse. I suppose this makes me a limited prescriptivist in matters linguistic.

For more on this particular example, see Chauvinism and Male Chauvinism.

Addendum. And then there's 'hook up.' To members of my generation it does not imply an exchange of bodily fluids when used in a sentence like 'I hooked up with Sally again after years and years.' Peter Geach, an English philosopher of my father's generation, in one of his books uses 'make love' to mean something like 'woo' or 'make a romantic approach,' a quaint usage that had fallen into desuetude by the time my generation came of age, a usage to be replaced in the main by one rather more raw and 'hydraulic.'

Trigger Warning!

The grandpappy of them all is attributable to Hanns Johst: Wenn ich Kultur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning! "When I hear the word culture, I release the safety on my Browning."

Often misquoted and misattributed. I myself misquoted it once as Wenn ich das Wort 'Kulture' höre, entsichere ich meine Pistole. I apologize for that rare lapse from the high standards of MavPhil. Wikipedia:

When the Nazis achieved power in 1933, Johst wrote the play Schlageter, an expression of Nazi ideology performed on Hitler's 44th birthday, 20 April 1933, to celebrate his victory. It was a heroic biography of the proto-Nazi martyr Albert Leo Schlageter. The famous line "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun", often associated with Nazi leaders, derives from this play. The actual original line from the play is slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!" "Whenever I hear of culture… I release the safety catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in conversation with the young Schlageter. In the scene Schlageter and his wartime comrade Friedrich Thiemann are studying for a college examination, but then start disputing whether it is worthwhile doing so when the nation is not free. Thiemann argues he would prefer to fight than to study.

SCHLAGETER: Good old Fritz! (Laughing.) No paradise will entice you out of your barbed wire entanglement!

THIEMANN: That's for damned sure! Barbed wire is barbed wire! I know what I'm up against…. No rose without a thorn!… And the last thing I'll stand for is ideas to get the better of me! I know that rubbish from '18 …, fraternity, equality, …, freedom …, beauty and dignity! You gotta use the right bait to hook 'em. And then, you're right in the middle of a parley and they say: Hands up! You're disarmed…, you republican voting swine!—No, let 'em keep their good distance with their whole ideological kettle of fish … I shoot with live ammunition! When I hear the word culture …, I release the safety on my Browning!"

SCHLAGETER: What a thing to say!

THIEMANN: It hits the mark! You can be sure of that.

SCHLAGETER: You've got a hair trigger.

—Hans Johst's Nazi Drama Schlageter. Translated with an introduction by Ford B. Parkes-Perret. Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, Stuttgart, 1984.

The famous line is regularly misattributed, sometimes to Hermann Göring and sometimes to Heinrich Himmler. In December 2007, historian David Starkey misattributed it to Joseph Goebbels in comments criticizing Queen Elizabeth II for being "poorly educated and philistine".^[1] It has also been adapted, for example by Stephen Hawking as "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol" and by filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in 1963's film Le Mépris, when a producer says to Fritz Lang: "Whenever I hear the word culture, I bring out my checkbook." Lang evokes the original line as he answers "Some years ago—some horrible years ago—the Nazis used to take out a pistol instead of a checkbook." Songwriter Roger Miller of Mission of Burma titled his 1981 song "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" after the line.^{[citation needed]}

Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey also riffs on the Johst line with his

I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words "phenomenology" or "structuralism", I reach for my buck knife. (Somewhere in Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

and his

When I hear the word ‘phenomenology,’ I reach for my revolver. (See here.)

Exercise for the reader: find more riffs!

UPDATE

Big Henry offers, "When I read the words 'trigger warning,' I reach for my delete key."

I'll go him one better. "When I hear the words 'trgger warning,' I reach for 1911 model .45 ACP."