A Substack warning to foolish conservatives.
Category: Language Matters
Melum ut in pluribus
I am having trouble understanding the above Latin expression. I encountered it in Theodor Haecker, Kierkegaard the Cripple (tr. C. Van O. Bruyn, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950) in the passage:
Not only for Augustine, but also for that Christian whose teaching is most perfectly harmonious, Thomas Aquinas, the evil in the world was always in the majority. Melum ut in pluribus. This must never be forgotten, nor was it in Kierkegaard's judgment. (pp. 29-30)
My first question: why melum and not malum?
Second question: where in Thomas can we find melum ut in pluribus?
Wiktionary informs us:
Borrowed from Ancient Greek μῆλον (mêlon). Doublet of mālum, from dialectal Ancient Greek μᾶλον (mâlon). First attested in Petronius.
Now mēlum n (genitive mēlī) means apple, and malum, mali means evil, adversity, torment, misery, punishment, etc. This answers my first question but gives rise to a third: Is there some connection here with the Adam and Eve story in the Garden?
Fourth question: I don't recall ever seeing the word 'apple' in my English versions of Genesis. Is there in the original text of Genesis a word that translates as 'apple'?
Fifth question: I don't understand ut in this context. Wiktionary says it can be used as an adverb or as a conjunction. But it doesn't seem to be used in either way in melum ut in pluribus.
Here are some other Latin phrases most of which my astute readers already know.
Sub-distinguishing the lie?
What does "sub-distinguishing the lie" mean in the following passage from A. J. A. Symons, The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography (NYRB, 2001, p. 73):
He [Frederick Rolfe, a.k.a. 'Baron Corvo'] was wont to condemn the alleged laxity of the Roman Communion in the matter of truthfulness, and its sub-distinguishing the lie. He himself, brought up a strict Anglican, had all the Anglican horror of lying and equivocation of every description. He seemed to be quite serious about it, which surprised us, as he was universally regarded as about the biggest liar that we had ever met.
What I want to know is what it means to sub-distinguish a lie, and I need examples of this alleged laxity of the Roman Communion in the matter of truthfulness.
Paging Dave Lull. And a tip of the hat to reader Hector C. for recommending Symons' intriguing book.
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Addendum (8/2/24): Dave Lull to the rescue. Mr. Lull writes, "I wonder whether the author means the distinguishing of the lie from “mental reservation.” That's it, I think; bang on the link and see if you don't agree.
The philosophy of lying is especially germane these days inasmuch as the Biden administration is composed from top to bottom of serial, brazen liars, bullshitters, and prevaricators of every conceivable stripe, not to mention Orwellian language subverters. (The Orwellian 180, as I like to call it, goes well beyond lying as I will explain later, and is far more pernicious.) A first-rate example of language subversion was provided by Alejandro Mayorkas, head of — wait for it — Homeland Security (sic!), when he said that the border is secure "as we define secure." Alright buddy, but then you are literally a horse's ass as I define horse's ass. What's your game, pal? Are you the head honcho of the Reconquista?
Now who is this Dave Lull fellow? Here is a tribute of mine from 2011, with links to tributes from others:
Who is Dave Lull?
If you are a blogger, then perhaps you too have been the recipient of his terse emails informing one of this or that blogworthy tidbit. Who is this Dave Lull guy anyway? Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence provides an answer:
As Pascal said of God (no blasphemy intended) Dave is the circle whose center is everywhere in the blogosphere and whose circumference is nowhere. He is a blogless unmoved mover. He is the lubricant that greases the machinery of half the online universe worth reading. He is copy editor, auxiliary conscience and friend. He is, in short, the OWL – Omnipresent Wisconsin Librarian.
For other tributes to the ever-helpful Lull see here. Live long, Dave, and grease on!
Novus Ordo?
Giving a Latin name to the destruction of the ancient Latin rite smacks of mockery.
‘Arguable’: a Near-Contronym
'Arguable' is a word that a careful writer, one who strives for clarity of expression, should probably avoid. I have always used it to mean: it may be plausibly argued that. But then I noticed that some use it to mean: open to dispute, questionable. These two meanings, though not polar opposites, are inconsistent.
The two meanings of the verb 'cleave,' however, are polar opposites: to stick together (intransitive) and to split apart (transitive). Merriam-Webster:
Cleave is part of an exclusive lexical club whose members are known as contronyms: words that have two meanings that contradict one another. In the case of cleave the two meanings belong to two etymologically distinct words. One cleave means “to adhere firmly and closely or loyally and unwaveringly,” as in “a family that cleaves to tradition”; it comes from the Old English verb clifian, meaning “to adhere.” The cleave with meanings relating to splitting and dividing comes from a different Old English word, clēofan, meaning “to split.” So although one might assume the two were once cleaved to one another only to become cloven over time, such is not the case!
One is never done learning the mother tongue. Mine is English. I fancy myself a worthy son who honors his mother, a mother who is also a mistress whom I will never master.
Just the other day, my assiduous editor, Tony Flood, pointed out that my use of 'enjoin' in a manuscript he is helping me prepare for publication, though a correct use, was ambiguous in the manner of 'cleave.' Now I have a keen nose for ambiguity, both syntactic and semantic, but this ambiguity had escaped me all these years. The verb 'enjoin' can mean either "to direct or impose by authoritative order or with urgent admonition" or "forbid, prohibit." I had been laboring under the misapprehension that it carried only the first meaning.
All hail to the mistress we will never master, our alma mater, the matrix of our musings, the sacred enabler of our thoughts.
This is why, to keep with the maternal metaphor, the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.
Trads on Offense
I especially liked the section on the Boomer nuns of Benedictine College who were not happy with the Butker speech and are described as crotchety farbissinas.
A farbissina, I take it, is a person who is farbissiner, a Yiddish word that means sullen, mean, embittered, of a sour disposition.
Word of the Day: Anfractuous
: full of windings and intricate turnings : TORTUOUS
The Unbreakable Anfractuous
Bad and Good Self-Censorship
'Censorship' and 'self-censorship' are not dirty words. There are good and bad forms of each.
Bad self-censorship
The spreading virus of wokeness has transformed not only publishing but the entire information economy. At every level of it from school lectures to movies to Substack blogs, participants are vulnerable to having their careers ruined by a woke criticism. Everyone I know in publishing is aware of this danger and must reckon on the consequences. As a result, we now have self-censorship. It is far worse than the McCarthyism of the 1950’s because its enforcers among the woke have the ability to create instant twitters storms for which there are few effective defenses. (Edward Jay Epstein)
Good self-censorship
Self-censorship and self-regulation of words, thoughts, desires, and emotions are essential to the moral life.
On Climate ‘Theology’
The Difference between Posing and Begging a Question
I found the nifty graphic below over at Flood's place. It is a pithy and pictorial presentation of a point I have been hammering away at online for the last twenty years. Here is a Substack hammer-job. Some say we should give up the fight and let the forces of linguistic decadence obliterate the distinction between posing and begging a question. I am inclined to say that we should fight on against the anti-civilizational forces while well aware that fighting-on may be nothing more than a pointless rear-guard action.
What say you?
Lee’s Lunar Lunacy
Another example of a dumb-as-dirt Dem.
No Sheila dear, the Moon is not a planet, but a natural satellite of the Earth, the only one in fact. Its singularity is why, in correct orthography, we write 'the Moon' and not 'the moon.' Jupiter has a number of moons, whereas the Earth has exactly one. Our moon is therefore properly referred to as 'the Moon.' And as you may have just now noticed, our home planet is properly referred to as 'the Earth,' not 'the earth.' And our sun, which the distinguished Congresswoman informs us is "a mighty powerful heat," is properly referred to as 'the Sun.' So-called 'journalists' take note.
Contrary to what Sheila thinks, the Moon is not made up mostly of gases. Nor is it a "complete-rounded circle" only when it is full. Does she perhaps think that the phases of the Moon are changes intrinsic to the Moon as opposed to changes in the way it appears to us? Does she think that the Moon is a two-dimensional object? Her talk of a circle suggests as much. May I suggest 'sphere' or even better 'spheroid'? Does she perhaps also think that the Moon is the source of its light? Is she aware that moonlight is reflected sunlight?
Please realize that when you vote for Democrats you are voting for people who, as a group, are not only morally inferior to Republicans, but also intellectually inferior as well. I am speaking of the contemporary Democrat party.
Story here.
Finally, what was the name of that black male pol who, if memory serves, opined that islands float and can sink?
‘Progressive’ and ‘Conservative’
In their contemporary usages these terms are mainly misnomers.
If progress is change for the good, there is little progressive about contemporary 'progressives.' They are more accurately referred to as regressives. Or do you think that allowing biological males to compete in women's sporting events is a change for the good? It is obviously not, for reasons you will be able to discern without my help. That is just one example among many.
As for so-called 'conservatives,' what do they ever succeed in conserving? These 'conservatives' are good at conserving only one thing: their own perquisites, privileges, pelf, and position. The things they are supposed to conserve they allow to be destroyed, among them, the rule of law, our rights and liberties as enumerated in the Constitution, our national heritage as embodied in monuments and statues to great men, the very distinctions, principles, and values that underpin our republican form of government. They will soon be gone forever, and the Left will have won, if we the people don't push back pronto.
But it may be too late for effective resistance, sunk as we Americans are in the warm bath of our own decadence. We shall see.
Meanwhile, don't get too excited about all this. This world's a vanishing quantity and we with it. The wise live for something that transcends it, but without dogmatism and doctrinal narrowness.
False Abstraction
Surely one of the idiocies of the age is the oft-repeated, "Diversity is our strength." Anyone who repeats this bit of thoughtless group-speak wears his folly like a scarlet letter. I'll leave it to the reader to work out why the falsehood is false and how it illustrates the fallacy of false abstraction. Why do I have to do all the work?
But a soupçon of sanity is beginning to glimmer in the heads of some of the original progenitors of DEI nonsense. See here.
Is Trump a Racist?
This morning at The New Yorker:
At this point, we know everything there is to know about Donald Trump. His diehard admirers—not all seventy-four million people who voted for him in the 2020 election but his immovable base, maybe thirty per cent of Republicans—admire him still, now more than ever. Is he a racist? Sure, by many definitions.
At this point I stopped reading. I cannot think of one reasonable definition of 'racist' according to which Trump would count as a racist. Can you? At least the journo* gives some evidence of understanding that the question whether so-an-so is an X depends on the definition of 'X.'
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*'Journo' is my term of disapprobation for hack journalists a crapload of whom can be found among the 'woke.'
Two Termites: Bergoglio and Biden
I sometimes refer to the current pope as Bergoglio the Termite to underscore the destructive effect he is having on a once-great institution. Early this morning it occurred to me that I might write a post comparing the various termites undermining our institutions. Of course 'President' Joe Biden immediately came to mind. Just now, an e-mail crossed the transom pointing me to an article in which William Kilpatrick, whom I have often approvingly quoted, does part of the job for me, comparing the termitic attributes of Bergoglio and Biden. I recommend it for your perusal.
Needless to say, when I refer to Bergoglio as a termite, that is a figurative use of language: I am not suggesting that he is literally an insect or ought to be 'rubbed out' by chemical or other means. People who cannot distinguish between the literal and the figurative show a lack of intelligence. Most recently, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others of his scrofulous ilk have shown this lack of intelligence when they failed to grasp that Donald Trump's recent use of 'bloodbath' was figurative, not literal.*
Joey B struggles with the distinction as well. Remember his “The American people literally stood on the brink of a new Depression”? That was around 2013 if memory serves.
It is worth noting that not every term of abuse is purely abusive: 'termite' as applied to Jorge and Joseph (both of whose initials are 'J. B.') is not purely abusive in that it contains a factual core: both of these clowns are in fact working to destroy their respective institutions. Wittingly or unwittingly? I am inclined to say wittingly in the case of Bergoglio, unwittingly in the case of the demented Biden.
There is of course a serious moral question connected to the use of abusive language meant to express contempt for fellow human beings. But in a war against such anti-civilizational forces as we now face, different rules of engagement are permissible. Or so it seems. A hard nut to crack.
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*You could of course respond to me that Scarborough and Co. understand the literal-figurative distinction and also understand that context is crucial in the interpretation of anyone's oral or written remark. They probably do. But then it is even worse for them: they are trying to bamboozle the American people. This is a moral defect, which is worse than a failure of understanding. Dripping with intellectual dishonesty and disregard for truth, these people warrant our contempt