Political Language – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

A Quote of Note from J. D. Vance’s RNC Speech

Here is the part of Vance's speech Thursday night that impressed me the most. It also impressed Cathy Young at The Bulwark, but for opposite reasons. It sounds Blut-und-Boden to her: "I think it’s fair to say that this portion of Vance’s speech had overtones of blood-and-soil nationalism." Fair? Or scurrilous?

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. [I would add: ONLY on our terms.] That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.

Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.

Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle[s]. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first. (Emphasis added.)

Perhaps I will explain myself tomorrow if Typepad behaves itself.

……………………

OK. It is now 'tomorrow.' (Memo to self: write a post on the use and abuse of temporal indexicals.)

There is a distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism. The former is rooted in blood and soil, language and tradition, the particular. The latter is based on ideas and propositions that purport to be of universal validity. American nationalism is not wholly civic. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any nation that could be wholly civic, wholly 'propositional' or wholly based on a set of beliefs and values. And yet the United States is a proposition nation: the propositions are in the founding documents. This cannot be reasonably denied. You should now pull out your copy of the Declaration of Independence and carefully re-read its second paragraph. There are plenty of propositions, presuppositions, principles and values there for you to feast your mind on.

I also don't see how it could be reasonably denied that the discovery and articulation and preservation of classically American principles and values was achieved by people belonging to a certain tradition grounded proximally in our founding documents and ultimately in our Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman heritage.

This has consequences for immigration policy. I take it to be axiomatic that immigration must be to the benefit of the host country, a benefit not to be defined in merely economic terms. I also take it to be axiomatic that there is no right to immigrate any more than anyone has a right to invade one's domicile and set up camp there. This is why immigrants must be vetted and why the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants must be upheld, along with the related distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Only those who accept our principles, values, and the like should be let in.

Although we are, collectively, in steep cultural decline, normative American culture is superior to plenty of other cultures I could mention. If you don't believe that, you are free to leave. Just as there is no right to immigrate, there is no obligation to stay. So there is a sense in which I am for open borders: they ought be be open in the outbound direction. This is why it is perfectly asinine to liken a southern border wall to the Berlin Wall as more than one prominent Democrat has done. It is entirely fitting that the totemic animal for this once-respectable party is the jackass. 'Asinine' from L. asinus = ass. The word is polyvalent, a fact I will exploit in a moment.

We have a culture to restore and defend. There is only one man who is in a position to lead us forward. You know who he is. So get off your sorry ass and join the fight.

As for Cathy Young, she is doing what hate-America leftist scum regularly do: she is playing the Nazi card, a card they never leave home without.

Signposts on the Way to the Insane Asylum

Looting is shopping without money.
The 2022 riots were peaceful.
The border is secure.
Trespassing is insurrection.
Dissent is hate.
Free speech is hate speech.
Barring candidates from the ballot is democratic.
Abortion is health care.
'Migrants' are newcomers.
The only purpose of guns is to kill people.
Math is racist.
There is no 'migrant' crisis.
Diversity is our strength.
'DEI' is the new 'N' word.
Coercive confiscation of firearms is gun buy-back.
Sex of a baby is not biologically inherent but a matter of 'assignment.'
Race and sex are social constructs.
To oppose the sexual mutilation of children is 'transphobic.'
'2A' is a terrorist marker.
White supremacy is the greatest threat we face.
'Blind review' denigrates the sightless.
The disabled are 'differently abled.'
To argue against the moral acceptability of homosexual practices is 'homophobic.'

I am just getting warmed up. But I'm sure you've caught the drift by now. Each of these bullet points can be nailed down with numerous references which I have supplied elsewhere in many a post.

It is now your turn to do something in defense of civilization.

‘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

Trump’s ‘Bloodbath’ Remark

Outdoing themselves in hyper-ventilatory TDS-fueled rage, Joe Scarborough and the rest of the mendacious insanos at MSDNC (aka MSNBC) and at other lamestream media outlets have seized upon Trump's bloodbath remark as if to illustrate Ayn Rand's point about context-dropping. Although I am no fan of Rand or her acolyte Peikoff as you can readily discern from my Rand category, this term from her lexicon does earn a non-plenary MavPhil endorsement.

Context matters!

No Person is Illegal!

That's true. No person is illegal. But who ever said that any person was?

'Woke' knuckleheads of the sort who recently criticized Joey B's SOTU reference to Lincoln Laken Riley's murderer as 'an illegal' regularly give something like the following lame argument:

1) No person is illegal.

2) If any person is justifiably labelled an 'illegal alien,' then some persons are illegal.

Therefore

3) No person is justifiably labelled an 'illegal alien.'

Therefore

4) The expression 'illegal alien' and such related expressions as 'illegal immigrant' must be banned.

There is no need to concern ourselves with the inferential move from (3) to (4). The argument is unsound because (2) is plainly false.

To see that it is false you have to be able to distinguish between agent and action, between doer and deed. 'Illegals' are so-called because of their illegal action, namely their illegal entry into the country, and not because they themselves, as agents, are illegal.

Of course, an appeal to sweet reason will get you nowhere with a leftist; what they understand is the hard fist of unreason.

As I have said many times, it is unreasonable to expect that all disputes can be settled reasonably.

And yet we have to have reasons at the ready for the reasonable.

That is why I wrote the above. Besides, I'm a natural-born scribbler who just loves to write, and loves to read what he has written. The life of the mind is its own reward.

What Leftists Mean by ‘Democracy’

They mean woke globalist plutocracy, or something in the semantic vicinity thereof. This is why the enemies of the people see nothing contradictory in using 'lawfare' to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. We the people, however, understand 'democracy' to mean rule by the people. On this understanding of the word, it makes no logical sense to attempt to defend democracy anti-democratically, that is, by silencing the vox populi.

The Orange Man, however, gets the last laugh since SCOTUS has spoken, 9-0. Even Justice Jackson went along, she who doesn't know what a woman is. Has she grown a pair?

The THC level of the stuff smoked in Colorado these days is much higher than that of the weed smoked back in those fabulous and far-off '60s. And the Coloradans, unlike Bill Clinton, inhale. The Rocky Mountain high is now 'plutocratically' high. Are the higher THC levels a causal factor, along with high altitude, in the etiology of Coloradan chucklephuckery?

Is that a rhetorical question or am I really asking? And what about the immediately preceding question? Rhetorical, or am I really asking?

Hot damn, if I didn't enjoy writing the above! The joy of blog. Seriously, though, mockery and derision are among the weapons we must deploy against our political enemies.

Leftists Regularly Abuse Language

Example du jour: 'Gun Buy Back'

Top o' the Stack.

Is Leftism a Form of Mental Illness?

Wokery is the most extreme form of leftism. Some if not all elements of wokery are indicative of mental illness on the part of those who actually believe them. I will mention just four.

Thinking that one can effect a sex-change by merely mental gymnastics, by 'identifying' as a woman or as a man. Cognate with this species of insanity is the notion that sex of a neonate is 'assigned' at birth as opposed to being biologically inherent in the organism that exits the birth canal. A name can be assigned but not sex. Not even an inappropriate nominal assignment has the power to alter the sex of the nominatum. The boy named 'Sue' remained a boy.
The bizarre notion that permitting or minimizing the consequences of criminal behavior will lead to less crime.
The astonishing conceit that mathematics is racist. Why exactly? Because blacks as a group are not good at it?
The knuckleheaded notion that wholly legitimate criticisms of a 'person of color' such as Alejandro Mayorkas may be deflected by hurling the slur 'racist,' a word which wokesters never define the better to use as an all-purpose semantic bludgeon.
Et cetera ad nauseam.

If January 6th was an Insurrection . . .

. . . how long until mere disagreement with the ruling class and their regime is deemed insurrection?

Two-Tiered System of Justice?

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.