{"id":5825,"date":"2017-01-28T05:33:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T05:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/28\/undocumented-workers-and-illegal-aliens\/"},"modified":"2017-01-28T05:33:14","modified_gmt":"2017-01-28T05:33:14","slug":"undocumented-workers-and-illegal-aliens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/28\/undocumented-workers-and-illegal-aliens\/","title":{"rendered":"Undocumented Workers and Illegal Aliens"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the purposes of this website is to combat the stupidity of Political Correctness, a stupidity that in many contemporary liberals, i.e., leftists, is willful and therefore morally censurable. The euphemism 'undocumented worker' is a good example of a PC expression. It does not require great logical acumen to see that 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' are not coextensive expressions. The extension of a term is the class of things to which the term applies. In the diagram below, let A be the class of illegal aliens, B the class of undocumented workers, and A^B the  intersection of these two classes. All three regions in the diagram are non-empty, which shows that A and B are not coextensive, and so are not the same class. Since A and B are not the same class, 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' do not have the same intension or meaning. If two terms differ in extension, then they differ in meaning. (The converse does not hold.) Differing in both extension and intension (sense, meaning), 'undocumented workers' and 'illegal aliens' expressions are not intersubstitutable. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Venn\"<\/a>To see why, note first that there are illegal aliens who are not workers since they are either petty criminals, or members of organized criminal gangs e.g., MS-13, some of whose illegal alien members are  terrorists, or too young to work, or unable to work. Note second that there are illegal aliens who have documents all right — forged documents. Note third that there are undocumented workers who  are not aliens: there are American citizens who work but without the legally requisite licenses and permits.<\/span><\/p>\n

 So the correct term is 'illegal alien.' It is descriptive and accurate  and there is no reason why it should not be used.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now will this little logical exercise convince a leftist to use language responsibly and stop obfuscating the issue? Of course not. Leftism in some of its forms is willfully embraced reality denial<\/em>, and in other of its forms is a cognitive aberration<\/em>, something like  a mental illness, in need of therapy rather than refutation. The latter are sick and one cannot refute the sick. They need treatment and quarantine and those who go near them should employ appropriate prophylactics.<\/span><\/p>\n

So why did I bother writing the above? Because there are people who have not yet succumbed to the PC malady and might benefit from a bit of logical prophylaxis. One can hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hope for the best.  But prepare for the worst.<\/span><\/p>\n

The winds of change that have blown the Orange Man into the White House have brought us to the shores of hope, hope for a return to sanity and order and the rule of law.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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<\/a>On Advertising One's Political Correctness<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Peter Kreeft on the Gender-Neutral Use of 'He'<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Grammar School<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Tenured Professor Loses Job over Blog Post<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Embattled conservative professor refuses to be silenced: 'They did not kill the lion'<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Obama, Political Correctness, and the Military<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the purposes of this website is to combat the stupidity of Political Correctness, a stupidity that in many contemporary liberals, i.e., leftists, is willful and therefore morally censurable. The euphemism 'undocumented worker' is a good example of a PC expression. It does not require great logical acumen to see that 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal … Continue reading “Undocumented Workers and Illegal Aliens”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,6,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immigration","category-language-matters","category-logica-utens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}