Sometimes, however, it is better to look before you leap.
Note this curious philo-lang point: 'he' above, though grammatically classifiable as a pronoun, does not function logically as a pronoun: it has no antecedent. It functions as a sex-neutral universal quantifier, or rather, it functions as an individual variable bound by a universal quantifier. Thus the maxim translates as 'For any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.'
I know what conservatives such as Sean Hannity mean when they employ the above expression, but the expression is inept. There cannot be two tiers of justice, one for the rulers and the other for the ruled, or one for Democrats and the other for Republicans, for the simple reason that justice in Anglo-American law is equal justice, one justice for all. A guiding principle of our republic, as the Pledge of Allegiance attests, is "liberty and justice for all." We are all (to be considered to be) equal before the law. Whether you are Joe Biden or Joe Blow, you are subject to the same laws. And the same goes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It is a guiding ideal essential to our system of government. That it is being egregiously violated in the case of Trump does not make it any less of an ideal.
Joe Sixpack will say, "This is all just semantics." That is the sort of response one expects from a barfly at Joe's Bar and Grill. Someone who says that has not grasped the truth I have been hammering on for the last twenty years: Language Matters!
Julian Epstein, Democrat, on Crooked Joe. (HT: Tony Flood) There is hope for some Dems.
I'm not totally opposed . . .
Top o' the Stack.
I strive for one Substack upload per day, no more. Why only one? Out of consideration for my readers. In these hyper-kinetic and hyper-connected times, an excess of 'incoming' can be annoying.
Leftists want to limit your vocabulary so as to limit your thought and make you easier to control. They want total control. David Horowitz says it well on his masthead, "Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out." (When a transgressive calls herself 'progressive,' you know there's a cesspool of mendacity up ahead.)
perseveration /pər-sĕv″ə-rā′shən/noun
- Uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.
- The tendency to continue or repeat an act or activity after the cessation of the original stimulus.
- The act or an instance of persevering; perseverance.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
Dubious Latin questioned over at Substack.
A big Stack attack on language abuse and wokeassery.
The importance of language and the injustice of 'equity.'
Top o' the Stack.
Roger Donway writes,
As I understand it, there are no "gender-neutral" nouns or pronouns in English. There is the masculine gender, the feminine gender, the neuter gender, and the common gender. The last applies to entities which have sex, but in contexts where both sexes are included or the sex is undetermined. "Someone has forgotten his umbrella." "Someone" and "his" are in the common gender. So, they do possess grammatical gender. They are not "gender neutral." Not positive about this, however.
Excellent comment, Mr. Donway. You're right. Strictly speaking, gender is a grammatical category with the four subcategories you mention. I was being sloppy in violation of my own principles. Properly expressed, my point was that 'man' has a legitimate sex-neutral use in standard English. When used to refer to both males and females, it is sex-neutral but not gender-neutral for precisely the reason you supplied: so used, the term's gender is common.
The sex of an animal is biologically based and therefore not a linguistic construct. This fact notwithstanding, it strikes me as legitimate to extend the sense of 'gender' so as to cover social roles. For example, traditionally women as a group have instantiated the nurse role and not the doctor role. No surprise: women can give birth, which biological fact makes women as a group more nurturing than men as a group and suits them for the nurse role. I have no objection to referring to the nurse role, a social role, as a gender role, midway as it is between the biotic/biological and the grammatical.
But this is an extended use of 'gender.' Strictly speaking, gender is a grammatical category!
A spectacularly clear example:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.
Exercise for the reader: explain the bias.
Under 14 minutes, by Massad Ayoob, one of the best. Words mean things, especially in a court of law. Precise, penetrating, and practical. As civil society collapses around us, and more and more of us must look to our own physical defense, you must also know how to avoid verbal entrapment by the prosecutorial shysters of the Left. 'Shyster,' as you know, is from the German sheissen, to shit. (I shit kid you not.)
phatic /făt′ĭk/adjective
- Of or relating to communication used to perform a social function rather than to convey information or ideas.
- Pertaining to words used to convey any kind of social relationship e.g polite mood, rather than meaning; for example, "How are you?" is often not a literal question but is said only as a greeting. (Similarly, a response such as "Fine" is often not an accurate answer, but merely an acknowledgement of the greeting.).
Stack leader. The image of Jeff Dunham’s “Walter” warns that a language rant is up ahead! All language lemmings to their safe spaces.
A Substack quickie. 'Woke' squeamishness exposed.
Yabut strikes me as a close cousin to Whataboutism. "Yeah, but . . . ."
Robert Paul Wolff, 30 October 2023:
I have found the series of comments on the Israeli situation interesting and helpful. I have not responded to them because I am so upset by what is happening that I can barely watch the news reports of it anymore. Let me make one small observation. There has been talk by Israeli officials and others about how this is an existential threat to the state of Israel. Let us just keep in mind that Israel is the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons and more generally is far and away the most powerful militarily. The attack on October 7, horrific and ugly and sadistic as it was, was no more a threat to Israel's existence then [than] was the attack on the twin towers on September 11 a threat to the existence of the United States.
Two points by way of rebuttal.
First, while it is true that Israel is the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons at the moment, that is very likely soon to change thanks to the concessions and fecklessness of the Obama-era appeasement policies vis-à-vis Iran promoted by puppet Biden and his (mal)administration.
Second, the October 7th massacre was not an isolated event, but part of the larger project of clearing the space "from the river to the sea" of Jews and their state once and for all. This larger project is part of a still larger one that without exaggeration can be called genocidal: to exterminate the Jewish people.* And beyond this there is the anti-civilizational project of destroying our superior Western culture, one pillar of which is Judeo-Christian, and whose last bastion, bloodied, decadent, and tottering though she be, is the Great Satan, the USA.
I will leave it to others to comment on the psychology of Jews like Wolff who embrace leftism. Some will say that he is a self-hating Jew who has internalized Jew hatred and turned it upon himself. I take no position on that speculation, but I do think a distinction is called for, namely, the distinction between a self-hating Jew and a Jew-hating Jew. Obviously, a Jew could hate himself for reasons other than his being Jewish. But every Jew who hates himself because of his Jewishness is a self-hating Jew.
__________
*To characterize the October 7th attack as "genocidal," as I heard one commentator do this morning, is a semantic stretch of the sort that is frowned upon here. Precision in the use of language is essential to intellectual hygiene.
Explained here. Is this a parody?
Word found here:
“I started to see these intelligent, educated people, whose mission is to make our system better for people of color, suddenly posting all this anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stuff,” Rose said. “I’m not changing my values, but screw the allyship. I will not stop fighting, because I believe in the causes themselves. But as for going out of my way to support, to post, to give money? I’m done.”
