Category: Language Matters

On Begging the Question

I just now heard Dennis Prager on his nationally-syndicated radio show use 'beg the question' when what he meant was 'raise the question.'

To raise a question is not to beg a question. 'Raise a question' and 'beg a question' ought not be used
interchangeably on pain of occluding a distinction essential to clear thought. To raise a question is just to pose it, to bring it before one's mind or before one's audience for consideration. To beg a question, however, is not to pose a question but to reason in a way that presupposes what one needs to prove.

Suppose A poses the question, 'Does Allah exist?' B responds by saying that Allah does exist because his
existence is attested in the Koran which Allah revealed to Muhammad. In this example, A raises a question, while B begs the question raised by A. The question is whether or not Allah exists; B's response begs the question by presupposing that Allah does exist. For Allah could not reveal anything to Muhammad unless Allah exists.

The phrase 'beg the question' is not as transparent as might be hoped. The Latin, petitio principii, is better: begging of the principle. Perhaps the simplest way to express the fallacy in English is by calling it circular reasoning. If I argue that The Los Angeles Times displays liberal bias because its reportage and editorializing show a left-of-center slant, then I reason in a circle, or beg the question. Fans of Greek may prefer hysteron proteron, literally, the later earlier. That is, what is logically posterior, namely, the conclusion, is taken to be logically prior, a premise.

Punchline: Never use 'beg the question' unless you are referring to an informal fallacy in reasoning. If
you are raising, asking, posing a question, then say that. Do your bit to preserve our alma mater, the English language. Honor thy mother! Matrix of our thoughts, she is deeper and higher than our thoughts, their sacred Enabler.

Of course, I am but a vox clamantis in deserto.  The battle has already been lost.  So why do I write
things like the above?  Because I am a natural-born scribbler who takes pleasure in these largely pointless exercises.

New PC Expression: ‘Customers of Size’

Or at least it was new when I first ran an ancestorof  this post on the old blog back in 2008 (26 July).

……………..

No doubt you have heard of 'people of color' not to be confused with 'colored people.' (But what exactly is the difference in reality?) Just this morning I discovered that some airlines are now referring to fat passengers as 'customers of size.' I am not making this up.

A 'customer of size' is defined by Southwest Airlines as one who is "unable to lower the armrests  (the definitive boundary between seats) and/or who compromise[s] any portion of adjacent seating . . . ."

As one who has been 'compromised' by obese flyers on more than one occasion, I can only applaud the policy if not the PC expression.

The tort against the English language is similar to that of dropping qualifiers. Thus a high quality journal is referred to as a 'quality' journal. But  since every journal has some quality, high, low, or middling, why should 'quality' get to stand in for 'high quality'? Why should 'intercourse' get to go proxy for 'sexual intercourse'?  Similarly for 'chauvinism' and 'male chauvinism.'  Since we all have some color or other, why are only some of us 'people of color'?  And since all of us have some size or other, why do some bear the distinction of being 'customers of size'?  Just because I'm not fat, I don't have a size?

Just because my body is not misshapen, I don't have a shape?

'Fat' is perhaps rude. But what is wrong with 'obese'? 

It is interesting to note the difference between 'sexual intercourse' and 'male chauvinism.'  'Male' here functions as an alienans adjective: it shifts or 'alienates' the sense of the term it qualifies: a male chauvinist is not a chauvinist.  'Sexual,' by contrast, in this context is a specifying adjective: sexual intercourse is a species of intercourse in the way that male chauvinism is not a species of chauvinism.

Recent talk of dummy sortals occasions the observation that 'dummy' here is an alienans adjective.  It is not as if sortals come in two kinds, dummy and non-dummy.

If I were to write a book, Sortals for Dummies, that would be a point I'd make early on.

For more fun with alienans adjectives see my Adjectives category.

‘A Pair of Pants’ and Other Quirks of English

We speak of a pair of shoes, a pair of socks, a pair of gloves. But why a pair of pants? 'He bought a new pair of pants.' 'Why, does he have four legs?' A pair of socks is two things, a pair of pants one. Raising to reflective awareness these little quirks of the mother tongue is a source of pleasure to some of us.

These are pronounced similarly: cowl, fowl, howl, jowl, owl, yowl. But 'bowl' is an exception. And note that each of the following is pronounced differently: blood, food, good. Blood is good food!

These are pronounced similarly: dour, hour, our, sour; but unlike 'four' and 'pour.' And 'tour' is pronounced differently still.

Addendum 5/28:   A reader sends us here, where we read:

According to Michael Quinoin at World Wide Words, pants are a pair because, "before the days of modern tailoring, such garments, whether underwear or outerwear, were indeed made in two parts, one for each leg. The pieces were put on each leg separately and then wrapped and tied or belted at the waist (just like cowboys’ chaps). The plural usage persisted out of habit even after the garments had become physically one piece.

With a little stretching, the explanation can be made to fit 'pair of panties' despite their not having legs.

And that reminds me of the weighty question put to Bill Clinton: boxers or briefs?   Instead of replying , as he should have, that that is not a question one asks the President of the United States, Bubba answered the question in a display of what could be called anti-gravitas.  And of course thoughts of Clinton lead on quite naturally to thoughts of  Monica Lewinksy and her thongs.  'Thong' and 'G-string' are two of the species of the genus 'panties.'  Does one speak of a pair of thongs or a pair of G-strings?  Do the English speak of a pair of knickers?  If I am not mistaken knickers are what we call panties.

‘The Wrong Side of History’

I once heard a prominent conservative tell an ideological opponent that he was 'on the wrong side of history.' But surely this is a phrase that no self-aware and self-consistent conservative should use. The phrase suggests that history is moving in a certain direction, toward various outcomes, and that this direction and these outcomes are somehow justified by the actual tendency of events. But how can the mere fact of a certain drift justify that drift? For example, we are moving in the United States, and not just here, towards more and more intrusive government, more and more socialism, less and less individual liberty. This has certainly been the trend from FDR on regardless of which party has been in power. Would a self-aware conservative want to say that the fact of this drift justifies it?  I think not.

'Everyone today believes that such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is true. 'Everyone now does such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such ought to be done. 'The direction of events is towards such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is a good or valuable outcome. In each of these cases there is a logical mistake. One cannot validly infer truth from belief, ought from is, or values from facts.

One who opposes the drift toward socialism, a drift that is accelerating under President Obama, is on the wrong side of history. But that is no objection unless one assumes that history's direction is the right direction. Now an Hegelian might believe that, one for whom all the real is rational and all the rational real. Marxists and 'progressives' might believe it. But no conservative who understands conservatism can believe it.

The other night a conservative talk show host told a guest that she was on the wrong side of history in her support for same-sex marriage.    My guess is that in a generation the same-sex marriage issue will be moot,  the liberals having won.  The liberals will have been on the right side of history.  The right side of history, but wrong nonetheless. 

As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative don't talk like a liberal. Don't validate, by adopting, their question-begging phrases.

On the Word ‘Racism’ and Some of its Definitions

Racist'Racism' and 'racist' are words used by liberals as all-purpose semantic bludgeons.  Proof of this is that the terms are never defined, and so can be used in wider or narrower senses depending on the polemical and ideological purposes at hand.  In common parlance 'racism' and 'racist'  are pejoratives, indeed, terms of abuse.  This is why it is foolish for conservatives such as John Derbyshire to describe themselves as racists while attempting to attach some non-pejorative connotation to the term.  It can't be done.  It would be a bit like describing oneself as as an asshole, 'but in the very best sense of the term.'  'Yeah, I'm an asshole  and proud of it; we need more assholes; it's a good thing to be.'  The word has no good senses, at least when applied to an entire human as opposed to an orifice thereof.  For words like 'asshole,' 'child molester,' and 'racist' semantic rehabilitation is simply not in the cards.  A conservative must never call himself a racist.  (And I don't see how calling himself a racialist is any better.)  What he must do is attack ridiculous definitions of the term, defend reasonable ones, and show how he is not a racist when the term is reasonably defined.

Let's run through some candidate definientia of 'racism':

1. The view that there are genetic or cultural differences between racial groups and that these differences have behavioral consequences.

Since this is indeed the case, (1) cannot be used to define 'racism.'  The term, as I said, is pejorative: it is morally bad to be a racist.  But it is not morally bad to be a truth-teller.  The underlying principle here is that it can't racism if it is true.  Is that not obvious?

Suppose I state that blacks are 11-13% of the U.S. population.  That cannot be a racist statement for the simple reason that it is true.  Nor can someone who makes such a statement be called a racist for making it.  A statement whose subject matter is racial is not a racist statement.  Or I inform you that blacks are more likely than whites to contract sickle-cell anemia.  That too is true.  But in this second example there is reference to an unpleasant truth.  Even more unpleasant are those truths about the differential rates of crime as between blacks and whites.  But pleasant or not, truth is truth, and there are no racist truths. (I apologize for hammering away at these platitudes, but in a Pee Cee world in which people have lost their minds, repetition of the obvious is necessary.)

2. The feeling of affinity for those of one's own racial and ethnic background.

It is entirely natural to feel more comfortable around people of one's own kind than around strangers.  And of course there is nothing morally objectionable in this. No racism here.

3. The view that it is morally justifiable  to put the interests of one's own race or ethnic group above those of another in situations of conflict or limited resources.  This is to be understood as the analog of the view that it it morally justifiable to put the interests of oneself and one's own family, friends, and neighbors above the interests of strangers in a situation of conflict or limited resources.

There is nothing morally objectionable in his, and nothing that could be legitimately called racism.

4. The view that the genetic and cultural differences between races or ethnic groups justifies genocide or slavery or the denial of political rights.

Now we arrive at an appropriate definiens of 'racism.'  This is one among several  legitimate ways of defining 'racism.'  Racism thus defined is morally offensive in the extreme.  I condemn it and you should to.  I condemn all who hold this. 

The Trayvon Martin Case and the Growing Racial Divide

Utterly outstanding analysis by Victor Davis Hanson.  I have but one quibble.  Hanson writes,

Millions of so-called whites are now adults who grew up in the age of affirmative action, and have no memory of systemic discrimination. To the degree some avoid certain schools, neighborhoods, or environments, they do so only on the basis of statistics, not profiling, that suggest a higher incidence of inner-city violence and crime.

My quibble concerns Hanson's use of 'profiling.'  He is suggesting a distinction between avoidant behavior based on statistics and such behavior based on profiling.  But there is no difference.  To profile is to predict the likelihood of a person's behavior based on statistical information.  A fiftyish Mormon matron from Salt Lake City does not fit the terrorist profile, but a twenty-something Egyptian Muslim from Cairo does.  To screen the two equally at an airport is therefore unreasonable, and to take a more careful look at the Egyptian is entirely reasonable. 

Who fits the heart attack profile?  Is it the obese and sedentary fiftyish smoker who has bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning,  or the nonsmoking, vegetarian, twenty-something marathoner?  The former, obviously.  Of course, it doesn't follow that the marathoner will not have a heart attack in the near future or that the fat man will.  It is a question of likelihood.  Similarly with the Mormon matron.  She may have a bomb secreted in her 1950's skirt, but I wouldn't bet on it.  If the Muslim is stripped-searched this is not because of some irrational hatred of Muslims but because of the FACT that twenty-something Muslim males  are more likely to be terrorists than fiftyish Mormon matrons.

What I am objecting to is the use of 'profiling' to refer to blind, unreasonable, hateful characterizing on the basis of skin color or ethnicity.  All decent people are opposed to the latter.  But that is not what profiling is. Profiling is neither blind, nor unreasonable, nor hateful.

What Mr. Hanson is doing is acquiescing in the liberal misuse of 'profiling.' It is not a pejorative term.  Liberals want to make it a pejorative term, but we must resist them. 

Language matters. 

‘Institutionalized Racism’

Liberals love the phrase, 'institutionalized racism.'  A  racist society it is in which so many blacks achieve high political office despite the fact that blacks are a small minority of the population.  Indeed, we have a black president.  What better proof that racism is inscribed into our institutional structure?  But then again, Obama is only half black.  If George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin fame is a 'white Hispanic' as maintained in the Solomonic pages of the New York Times, then, by parity of reasoning, Barack Obama is a 'white black.'  Is that perhaps the proof of institutional racism?  You see, if the USA were not institutionally racist, then we would have a black-black president by now.

Of course I am being sarcastic.  In dealing with notions as preternaturally idiotic as those of liberals, mockery, derision, sarcasm and the like are more effective than patient argument.  Reason and argument are effective only with those who inhabit the plane of reason. There is no point in talking sense to the denizens of the planet Unsinn.   Or if you are not in the mood to mock and deride them, if you are feeling charitable, then offer your help and therapy.  Those who are beneath reason do not need refutation; they need therapy.  They need care.  And we conservatives do care.  We want you liberals to be happy and successful and less stupid.  Of course we are honest enough to admit that our motive is partially selfish: the less stupid and unsuccessful and unhappy you are, the better it will be for us.

Actually, what we need is a 'proctology' of the liberal.  We need to understand how so many heads can inhabit that region where the sun doesn't shine.  But understanding is not enough: we need practical methods of extraction.  My fear, however, is that even an army of proctologists, each member of which enjoys the life span of a Methuselah, would not be able to bring the shrunken pate of even one liberal into the light of day.

And that's a pity. (I have successfully resisted the temptation to engage in scatological alliteration.)

For an example of the sort of idiocy I am excoriating, see here; for an antidote, go here.

Social Justice or Subsidiarity?

Just over the transom from James Anderson:

I appreciated your recent posts on "social justice." I agree that the phrase is a mendacious rhetorical device and that conservatives should refuse to use it. But what should we use instead? In one post you asked what's wrong with "plain old 'justice.'"  One problem is that the phrase "social justice" has now become so depressingly commonplace that many folk, unaware of this conceptual revisionism, understand "justice" as shorthand for "social justice". So conservatives need their own distinctive qualifier. Fight fire with fire. What would be your suggestion?

One possibility is "natural justice". Not only does it tip its hat toward the venerable natural law tradition, it also communicates the idea that justice is inextricably tied to the intrinsic nature of things (specifically, the nature of human beings) as opposed to being a mere social construction (as, perhaps, "social justice" suggests). And like "social justice" it has the virtue of being unobjectionable on the face of it. To adapt the opening sentence of one of your posts: "How could any decent person be opposed to natural justice?" What would be the alternative? Unnatural justice?

I'd love to read your own thoughts on this, if you're inclined to share them.

I wish I had a worked-out theory and I wish I had a good answer for Professor Anderson.  But I won't let the absence of both stop me from making a few remarks. Nescio, ergo blogo.

As a sort of joke I might suggest that 'subsidiarity' be used by conservatives instead of 'social justice.'  The trouble with that word, of course, is that it conveys no definite idea to the average person whereas 'social justice' seems to convey a definite idea, one that the average person is inclined to embrace.  It sounds so good!  Who could be opposed to social justice and a just society?   But once one understands what 'social justice' means in the mouth of a leftist, then one has excellent reason to oppose it.  The Left has hijacked the phrase and now they own it; it would be quixotic for a conservative to try to infuse it with a reasonable meaning and win it back.  Let the Left have it!

Anderson and I therefore  agree that we conservatives should never use 'social justice,' or 'economic justice' for that matter.  Beyond that, we might take to using 'socialist justice' as an informative and accurate  way of referring to what leftists call social justice.  But what word or phrase should we use?   How about 'local justice'?  That's not very good, but at least it points in the the subsidiarist direction. Plain old 'justice' is better.  Anderson's 'natural justice' is serviceable.  It has the virtue of combating the notion that justice is a social construct.  But it doesn't combat the top-down control model of socialists and collectivists.  This brings me to subsidiarity.

David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the Obama administration and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme.  By the way, one of the many mistakes Rick Santorum made in his campaign was to attack all government-sponsored education.  He was right to question whether the Federal government has any role to play in education, but to question the role of state and local government in education was a foolish extremism that befits a libertarian, not a conservative.

I take it that subsidiarity is easily detachable from other Catholic doctrines.  Professor Anderson needn't fear that he will be driven in the direction of papal infallibility or Transubstantiation.  In any case, Catholics don't own subsidiarity.  In the ComBox to this excellent post, we find:

"SPHERE SOVEREIGNTY: A principle of Reformed Christian social ethics, usually associated with the thought of Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper*, that identifies a number of God- ordained creational spheres, which include the family, the state, culture, and the church. These spheres each have their own organizing and ruling ordinances, and each maintains a measure of authority relative to the others. Just social and political structures, therefore, should be ordered so that the authority of each sphere is preserved (see Limited Government and Subsidiarity, The Principle of)."

Subsidiarity also fits well wth federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Obama come November.  By the way, 'federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Permit me to coin 'malaptronym.'  If an aptronym is a name that suits its bearer, then 'federalism' is a malaptronym, a name that not only does not suit its bearer, but misleads as to the nature of said bearer.   And the same, of course, is true in spades of 'social justice.'

I say we consign it to the dreaded index verborum prohibitorum!

On the Misuse of ‘Unilateral’

The following  post from the old blog written 20 July 2005 makes a point that bears repeating.

John Nichols of the The Nation appeared on the hard-Left show, "Democracy Now," on the morning of 2 September 2004. Like many libs and lefties, he misused 'unilateral' to mean 'without United Nations   support.' In this sense, coalition operations against Saddam Hussein's regime were 'unilateral' despite the the fact that said operations were precisely those of a coalition of some thirty countries.

The same willful mistake was made by his boss Victor Navasky on 17 July 2005 while being interviewed by David Frum on C-Span 2.

Words have established meanings. Intellectually honest people respect those meanings. Too many libs and lefties do not. Out to win at all costs, they will do anything to secure their ends, including hijacking the terms of a debate and piloting them to some Left-coast destination.

When they are not corrupting established words, they are inventing question-begging epithets such as 'homophobia,' and 'Islamophobia.'  A phobia is an irrational fear.  There is nothing irrational about fear of radical Islam.  And there neeedn't be anything fearful or irrational about opposition to homosexual practices.

The Underground Grammarian

If you think that I am a language Nazi, then pay a visit to the Underground Grammarian. His stern visage reminds me of a passage near the beginning of Franz Kafka's Vor dem Gesetz, "Before the Law." The protagonist seeks entry into the Law, but at the door stands a guard who warns:

     Ich bin maechtig. Und ich bin nur der unterste Tuerhueter. Von Saal
     zu Saal stehn aber Tuerhueter, einer maechtiger als der andere.
     Schon den Anblick des dritten kann nicht einmal ich ertrage.

     I am powerful. And I am but the least of the gatekeepers. From room
     to room there are gatekeepers each stronger than the next. Not even
     I can bear so much as the glance of the third. (tr. BV)

Leftism Not a Religion

Dennis Prager often says that leftism is a religion. That is a sloppy use of language. Leftism is an anti-religious political ideology that functions in the lives of its adherents much like religions function in the lives of their adherents. To call leftism a religion only sires confusion. It is enough to say it is like a religion in certain key respects.

Or you could say that leftism is an ersatz religion for leftists. 'Ersatz' here functions as an alienans adjective. A substitute for religion is not a religion.

It is also important to observe that conservatism for irreligious conservatives does not typically function as an ersatz religion for them. That would make a nice separate post.

Resemblance is not identity. Language matters.