{"id":5880,"date":"2017-01-09T04:32:17","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T04:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/09\/cultural-suicide\/"},"modified":"2017-01-09T04:32:17","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T04:32:17","slug":"cultural-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/09\/cultural-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another example<\/a>.  (HT: Karl White)<\/span> "University students demand philosophers such as Plato and Kant are removed from syllabus because they are white."  <\/span><\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/em> title isn't even grammatical. The stupid demand is that these greats BE removed.  Has England declined so far that its journalists can no longer write or speak correct English and must take instruction from an American blogger?<\/span><\/p>\n

Demands refer to future events.  I can demand that you leave my house, but I can't demand that you not have entered it, or that you are leaving it.  I could of course demand that you continue the process of removing your sorry ass from my premises, but that too is a future-oriented demand.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I demand that you are stopping to be a willfully stupid leftist and that you are removed from my presence!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

UPDATE (1\/10). <\/em> Horace Jeffery Hodges comments,<\/span><\/p>\n

I think the statement is British English:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
"University students demand philosophers such as Plato and Kant are removed from syllabus because they are white." <\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
American English  requires a subjunctive form:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
I demand that they be removed . . . <\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This is one of the things I dislike about British grammar.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
I don't know.  I may be wrong, and Jeff may be right.  In any case, it makes no bloody sense to use the present tense to refer to a future event.  It is in the nature of a demand that it point us to the future for its satisfaction or the opposite. There is more to grammar than usage; there is also logic broadly construed.  But then I am something of a prescriptivist.  The distinction between singular and plural, for example, is logical and good grammar respects it.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
\n
Correct: A polite chess player thanks his opponent for the game, whether he wins or loses.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Incorrect: A polite chess player thanks their opponent for the game, whether they win or lose.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
What about this: A polite chess player thanks her opponent for the game, whether she wins or loses.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/div>\n
I argued years ago that if 'his' can be correctly used gender-neutrally, then so can 'her.'  And this despite the fact that in 'standard English usage' (admittedly a tendentious phrase) 'his' but not 'her' can be so used.  Lydia McGrew got her knickers in a knot over this, thinking that I had succumbed to political correctness.  This goes to show that for some conservatives one can never be too conservative.  The least little concession to liberals shows that one has 'sold out.' <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
But more important than quibbling over language is defeating the Left and the contemptible shitheads who would remove Plato and Kant from the curriculum.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
What these cranially-feculent morons fail to grasp is that really to understand their own crack-brained POMO ideology, they would have to study Kant.  Kant's defensible constructivism was part of the set-up for their indefensible constructivism.  Besides, you need Kant to understand Hegel, and Hegel Marx, and Marx the Frankfurt School . . . .<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another example.  (HT: Karl White) "University students demand philosophers such as Plato and Kant are removed from syllabus because they are white."   The Telegraph title isn't even grammatical. The stupid demand is that these greats BE removed.  Has England declined so far that its journalists can no longer write or speak correct English … Continue reading “Cultural Suicide”<\/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":[52,498,180,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-authority-and-its-abdication","category-decline-of-the-west","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880","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=5880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}