Category: Language Matters

Left, Right, Sex, and Gender

Top o' the Stack.

Conservatives especially need to push back against linguistic wokery. And yet how many so-called conservatives continue to conflate sex and gender, race and skin color!  

He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.

The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.

Conservatives are long on talk, but short on conservation.

Recommended article: Thomas D. Klingenstein and John Fonte, Woke Revolutionaries Versus Americanists.

And just for fun, here is proof that James Carville — remember him? — is still a class act after all these years.

On ‘Illegal Alien’ and ‘Illegal Immigrant’

Substack latest.

The Republic is probably beyond saving at this late date. So why do I bother to write pieces that underscore what really ought to be obvious? One reason is selfish: I like to write and then re-read what I have written. But having taken the time to write something clean, coherent, and sensible, why should I hide my light  under a bushel? It is not impossible that a half-dozen readers will actually read what I have written and be led to think a bit more clearly and act a little more responsibly.  

resist, Resist, RESIST!

Seemingly, no day without a 'woke' outrage.  See below. Beneath refutation. There's no point in trying to engage these clowns on the plane of reason. Mock, deride, resist, and above all: ignore the A.P.'s  asinine recommendations.  By the way, 'asinine' is spelled exactly as I just spelled it, and not 'assinine' despite the fact that L. asinus mean ass or donkey. So if  I call you a wokeass, I am saying inter alia that you are donkey-dumb, the ass being the totemic animal of the Democrat Party. 

Write and speak sentences like this: "The Germans are more rule-bound than the Italians." Not only does this sentence violate the A. P. recommendation, thereby resisting willful wokester self-enstupidation, it is also offensive to the wokeassed on the ground of its being a generic statement. "One must never generalize!"  But I just did, and so did you. The difference is that my generalization is true whereas yours is self-refuting. Try thinking for a change, and you just might think your way out of your wokeassery. Since I care about and you and your sanity, I recommend that you study my Substack article Generic Statements.  

AP's tweet lumping "the French" in with list of "dehumanizing" labels.

Of ‘Blind Review’ and Pandora’s Box

Tony Flood sent me here for the latest outrage at Stanford.

But this crapola is old hat. On April Fool's Day, 2014, I worked myself into a fine lather over it. The latter manifested itself as a rant that is now available for your delectation at the top of my (Sub)stack. You will enjoy it.

As I wrote to Tony this morning after receiving his message:

Synchronicity City!

I was just reviewing an old post of mine on this very topic!  This is nothing new, Tony. I shall upload my old rant to Substack.

The deeper I meditate, the more synchronicity. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? I am of course properly skeptical of Jung and his ideas.  Doubt is the engine of inquiry as I have said too many times.
 
Will respond to your other points and queries later.

A Proposed Change to the Pater Noster

Substitute "Do not allow us to be led into temptation" for "Lead us not into temptation." For why on earth or in heaven would the Father of Lights want to lead us into the darkness of temptation?

………………

Vito Caiati comments:

With regard to today’s short post, “A Proposed Change to the Pater Noster. I think that you may find Aquinas’ understanding of the petition “Lead us not into temptation” worthy of your consideration. Specifically, in the “Explanation of the Lord’s Prayer” (Expositio in orationem dominicam), he writes:

But does God lead one to evil, that he should pray: "Lead us not into temptation"?

I reply that God is said to lead a person into evil by permitting him to the extent that, because of his many sins, He withdraws His grace from man, and as a result of this withdrawal man does fall into sin. Therefore, we sing in the Psalm: "When my strength shall fail, do not Thou forsake me."[23] God, however, directs man by the fervor of charity that he be not led into temptation. For charity even in its smallest degree is able to resist any kind of sin: "Many waters cannot quench charity."[24] He also guides man by the light of his intellect in which he teaches him what he should do. For as the Philosopher says: "Everyone who sins is ignorant."[25] "I will give thee understanding and I will instruct thee."[26] It was for this last that David prayed, saying: "Enlighten my eyes that I never sleep in death; lest at any time my enemy say: I have prevailed against him."[27] We have this through the gift of understanding. Therefore, when we refuse to consent to temptation, we keep our hearts pure: "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."[28] And it follows from this petition that we are led up to the sight of God, and to it may God lead us all! (https://isidore.co/aquinas/PaterNoster.htm)

This interpretation of the text in question not only avoids the clearly undesirable implication that God would “want to lead us into the darkness of temptation” but it also logically follows from the fifth (“forgive us our trespasses”) and sixth (“deliver us from evil”) petitions, the former asking forgiveness for our sins and the latter protection against all the evils of the world, many of which flow from them. Thus, these concern the effects of past sin, ours or our ancestors, while the seventh implores God not to remove the very grace that protects us from sinning again, given our fallen state.

I thank Vito for his erudite comment and for exposing my ignorance of the fact that the doctor angelicus had addressed my puzzlement long ago.  I am having some trouble, though, making sense of Thomas' explanation. He seems to be saying the following.

Man freely sins. God freely responds by withdrawing his grace. This withdrawal of grace either causes or raises the probability that man commit further sins.  "Lead us not into temptation" is thus a request that God not withdraw or withhold the grace we need to keep from sinning.  Accordingly, God leads us into temptation when he withdraws or withholds the grace we need to keep from sinning. I am sorry but I find this a rather strained attempt at making sense of the petition, "Lead us not into temptation." 

How does it go in Greek? Not knowing Greek, I cannot say.  In any case, Christ did not speak Greek. So we cannot be sure of the sense of the words Christ used when he taught his disciples the "Our Father." 

Aquinas quotes Aristotle  in the passage above. But did The Philosopher have the word sin' or the Greek equivalent in his philosophical vocabulary?  Was there a Greek equivalent that has the same  sense as 'sin' when used by Jews and Christians? Sin is an offense against God. Can one sin against the Unmoved Mover, against Thought thinking itself (noesis noeseos)? Can one sin against any of the Greek gods, Zeus for example? I don't know.  Nescio, ergo blogo.

A Minor Correction Anent ‘Absurd’ with a Little Help from Mark Rothko

In a Substack entry I distinguished four senses of 'absurd,' the logico-mathematical, the semantic, the existential, and the ordinary. About the existential sense I had this to say:

3) Existential.  The absurd as the existentially meaningless, the groundless, the brute-factual, the intrinsically unintelligible.  The absurdity of existence in this sense of 'absurd' is what elicited Jean-Paul Sartre's and his character Roquentin's  nausea.  The sheer, meaningless, disgusting, facticity of the chestnut tree referenced in the eponymous novel, for example, was described by Sartre as de trop and as an unintelligible excrescence.

That's pretty good, but it leaves out an important nuance.  In "A Case in Reason for God's Existence?" Joseph Donceel, S. J. points out that it is not enough for a thing to count as absurd in what I am calling the existential sense that it be meaningless or unintelligible.  For the absurd is not simply that which makes no sense; it is that  which makes no sense, but ought to, or is supposed to.  To say that life is absurd is not merely to say that it has no point or purpose; it is to say that it fails to meet a deep and universal demand or expectation on our part that it have a point or purpose. Donceel:

No one calls decorative painting absurd, but many people feel that most modern painting is absurd, because they expect it to make sense for them, and it does not. We understand what is meant when people say of reality or of life that it does not make sense. But their claim that it is absurd implies that it should make sense, that they expect it to make sense. (God Knowable and Unknowable, ed. Roth, Fordham UP, 1973, p. 181.) 

The decadent 'art' of Mark Rothko et al., which is presumably intended to be art and not mere wall decoration or ornamentation meant to add a splash of color to an otherwise drab room, reflects the absurdist sensibility of the post-modern era. Healthy folk — as opposed to neurotic 'transgressive' NYC hipsters — find it absurd because it defeats their expectation that art should 'mean something' not just in the sense of representing something, but in the sense of representing something that inspires and uplifts and is beautiful in the Platonic sense that brackets (encompasses) the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

At the opposite end of the spectrum there is kitsch, the king of which is Thomas Kinkade. Bang on the hyperlink to see samples of his work. I am not for kitsch, but I will take it over the decadent stuff. It is less fraying of the fabric of civilization. At the present time, the anti-civilizational forces are on the march and in dire need of stiff-necked opposition. But now I am straying into aesthetics about which I know little. But that doesn't stop me since, as you know, one of my mottoes is:

Nescio, ergo blogo.

Rothko untitled

Hegel on History: Another Case of Misattribution

Misattributed to Hegel: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." Close, but that's not what he says. 

I haven't checked the following quotations, but they look good to the eye of one who has read his fair share of the Swabian genius. HT: Seth Nimbosa

Was die Erfahrung aber und die Geschichte lehren, ist dieses, daß Völker und Regierungen niemals etwas aus der Geschichte gelernt und nach Lehren, die aus derselben zu ziehen gewesen wären, gehandelt haben. (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte)

What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. (Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, tr. H. B. Nisbet (1975))

I'll leave it to the reader to ponder the internal coherence, or rather incoherence, of the Hegelian observation.

Related:

Misattributed to Socrates

A Misattribution [of mine] Corrected

If you can show me that I have made a mistake, I will admit my error.  How many people do that? Am I now 'signaling my virtue' or setting a good example? You decide. 

Of course, it is easy to admit minor errors.  It is the big ones that we are loathe to admit.

Fetterman Unfettered: Against Ableism

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman is currently competing with Dr. Mehmet Oz for a seat in the U. S. Senate. Any objective person who observes both men in action can see that Fetterman is mentally, morally, and politically unfit for office.  (I won't comment on the 'hoodie,' the ugly forearm tattoos, the neck bulge, the man's lack of a career outside of politics, or his 'anti-gravitas': the man's overall thuggish appearance.)

Mentally, he has trouble formulating clear sentences.  A recent stroke has left him impaired. Morally, he is a brazen liar: he recently stated in a debate with Dr. Oz that he supports fracking when it is obvious from his previous assertions and his overall position that he does not. Politically, he supports destructive hard-Left positions with respect to drugs and crime and everything else.

But let's say you believe in 'equity' as wokesters use the word. You believe in equality of outcome and proportional representation regardless of merit and qualifications.  If 'equity' is your concern why shouldn't a stroke-impaired man be a U. S. senator? After all, if dementia is no bar to high office, why should stroke-impairment be?  Fetterman's fit with the Biden bunch couldn't be tighter. To demand qualifications for high office or for any job at all is to discriminate against the unqualified, and we now know that discrimination is among the worst of sins. We are all equal and the supposed accomplishments and talents of Dr. Oz the heart surgeon really ought to count for nothing in an equitable society. We have made progress in the 'progressive' sense of the term. And we are better people for it. 

The disabled are just as qualified as the rest of us. For they are not really disabled at all; they are differently abled.  I myself was born with only one functioning ear. But this birth defect gives me the ability to block out sound in bed by putting my good ear down on the pillow. Clearly, this wonderful ability of mine compensates for all of the drawbacks of monaural hearing such as the inability to tell from which direction a sound is coming. The point generalizes: all disabilities are really abilities in disguise. No one should ever be evaluated in any way on the basis of supposed 'talents' or 'qualifications' or 'abilities' or 'accomplishments.' What I said in my first paragraph convicts me of the thought crime of 'ableism.'  I ought to check myself into the nearest 'progressive' re-education camp.