Maverick Philosopher

Of 'Shit' and 'S**t,' Type and Token

How many words immediately below, two or one?

cat

cat.

Both answers are plausible, and indeed equally plausible; but they can't both be right. There can't be both two words and one word. The obvious way to solve the problem is by distinguishing between token and type. We say: there are two tokens of the same type. One type, two tokens. That's a good proximate solution but not, if I am right, a good ultimate one. But that's a long story for another time.

Some write 's**t' to avoid writing 'shit.' Aren't they two tokens of the same word type? How then can one token be offensive and the other not? Or one more offensive than the other?

Here is a dilemma for your delectation:

Either we have two tokens of the same type or we don't. If the former, then both are offensive, and nothing is gained in point of politeness by writing 's**t' instead of 'shit.'

If, on the other hand, the inscriptions are not two tokens of the same type, then 's**t' cannot substitute for 'shit' in a manner that conveys the same meaning that 'shit' conveys to the English speaker.

We seem to have sunk into some really deep shit/s**t!

(Crossposted at my FB page where I expect some discussion to erupt.)

Paradox and Contradiction

A form of words can be paradoxical but not contradictory, e.g., "Most people want to become old, but few want to be old."

The expression is paradoxical, and therein lies its literary charm, but the thought is non-contradictory. The thought, expressed non-paradoxically, is: Most want to live a long time, but few if any want to suffer the decrepitude attendant upon living a long time.

One logic lesson to be drawn is that a paradox is not the same as a contradiction.

It is therefore a mistake to refer to Russell's Antinomy as 'Russell's Paradox.'

Thus spoke the Language Nazi.

Word of the Day: Demesne

Merriam-Webster:

1: legal possession of land as one's own

2: manorial land actually possessed by the lord and not held by tenants

3a: the land attached to a mansion

b: landed property : ESTATE

c: REGION sense 2, TERRITORY

4: REALM sense 2, DOMAIN

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

If you think you know the meaning of a word, you are well-advised to check your understanding. Even if you really do know the meaning of a word, you probably don't know all of its shades and variants.

If you work steadily at this, then perhaps someday you will have a vocabulary half as extensive as that of your humble correspondent.

Mary Midgley on Complaints about Clarity

Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

'Wankerati' and Other Terms of Abuse

I  picked up a new piece of invective from Mark Steyn.

I believe he intends 'wankerati' to be coextensive with 'left-wing commentariat.'  Read his The Turning Point and see if you don't agree. The brilliant polemicist offers up other choice phrases such as "malign carbuncles on the body politic." That's a reference to Di Fi (Dianne Feinstein), et al. And there's "a chamber full of posturing tosspots."

'Tosspot' is a general term of abuse that conjures up drunkard and sot. It puts me in mind of pot-valiant. One is correctly so described if one's courage derives from the consumption of spirits.

There is a use for abuse. It is a mistake to think that verbal abuse ought never to be employed.

Hands are best employed in caressing and blessing. But sometimes they need to be balled into fists and rudely applied to the faces of miscreants. 

If one resorts to verbal abuse and invective one does not always thereby betray a paucity of careful thought informed by fact. Verbal abuse has a legitimate use in application to the self-enstupidated, the willfully ignorant, and those out for power alone regardless of truth and morality. 

It is not reasonable to think that all are amenable to the dulcet tones of sweet reason; some need to be countered with the hard fist of unreason.  

On the other side of the question, one should never resort to invective if one is trying to persuade a reasonable person. One should proceed as calmly as possible.  Any resort to billingsgate will cause the interlocutor to assume that one lacks good reasons.  

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If you studied the above properly you will probably have learned three or four new words.

If you have a large vocabulary you will love my blog; if you don't, you need it.

More Grist for the Moral Mill

If you tell one lie, are you a liar? I should think not. A liar is one who habitually lies. Otherwise, we would all be liars and the term 'liar' would perish from lack of contrast.

If you have been seriously drunk a time or two, are you a drunkard? I should think not. A drunkard is one who habitually gets drunk. Otherwise we would damn near all be drunkards, and the term 'drunkard' would perish from lack of contrast.

This rumination is iterable across thief, lecher, glutton and other terms of moral disapprobation.

But if a man commits murder just one time, we call him a murderer and we feel justified in so doing. We would find it ridiculous were he to complain, "I shot man in Reno just to watch him die, but I am no murderer; a murderer is  one who regularly and habitually does the deed."

How about rape? Does one rape a rapist make?  I think we would say yes.

So what is the difference between murder and rape and the other cases? The gravity of the crimes would seem to be one factor and the relative rarity another.

More grist for the mill.

It is not easy to think clearly and deeply about moral questions. Few even try.

'Nonconsensual Choking'

I was struck by a curious expression I found in a recent NYRB piece:

I faced criminal charges including hair-pulling, hitting during intimacy in one instance, and—the most serious allegation—nonconsensual choking while making out with a woman on a date in 2002.

As opposed to what? Consensual choking? So if you are on a date and the girl consents to being choked, then it is morally acceptable? And what sort of girl wants to be choked? Next stop: erotic asphyxiation. Why not, if it is consensual? You might even try mutual erotic asphyxiation. That might not end well, however. David Carradine's auto-erotic adventure in auto-asphyxiation in a Bangkok hotel room proved to be his last.

From another source, I gather that the hitting mentioned in the quotation is punching a girl in the head against her will. So if she wants to be punched in the head,  there is nothing wrong with it?

I'd say we are living in sick times if the consent of the done to is sufficient for the moral acceptability of the doer's deed. 

I'll leave it to you to work out why.

Related entry: Real Enough to Debase, but not to Satisfy

UPDATE (9/16)

A reader expands our vocabulary of depravity with a link to donkey punch. Not for the easily shocked. But I think it is important to look human wretchedness hard in the face and realize what becomes of morality when it is untethered from a transcendent anchor. This is what is happening in the RCC under Bergoglio the Termite. 

A Letter from Ronald Reagan to his Dying Father-in-Law

Here:

Loyal Davis, Reagan’s father-in-law and a pioneering neurosurgeon, was just days away from death.

Something else worried Reagan: The dying man was, by most definitions of the word, an atheist.

“I have never been able to subscribe to the divinity of Jesus Christ nor his virgin birth. I don’t believe in his resurrection, or a heaven or hell as places,” Davis once wrote. “If we are remembered and discussed with pleasure and happiness after death, this is our heavenly reward.”

Reagan, on the other hand, believed everyone would face a day of judgment, and that Davis’s was near. So the most powerful man in the world put everything else aside, took pen in hand and set out on an urgent mission — to rescue one soul.

This provides further insight into why the Left so hated Reagan: he was a man of faith.

I can't help but point out that what Loyal Davis says about "our heavenly reward" is disgusting nonsense. Why disgusting? Because it twists words to mean what they can't mean.  There is nothing heavenly or rewarding about being the merely intentional object of a few flickering and intermittent memories of a few mortals soon to bite the dust themselves.

Memo to atheists: if you are a hard-assed naturalist, hoe the row to the bitter end and issue no claptrap about a heavenly reward. Man up, accept the consequences of your doctrine, and show some respect for the English language.

'Democracy'

Are you becoming as sick of this word as I am?

Fareed Zakaria complains of a threat to democracy -- from the Left. Conservatives, he notes, are regularly denied a platform. If you have been following the news, you know that Stephen K. Bannon is a recent example of one denied.

But how is this assault on the classically liberal values of free speech and open inquiry a threat to 'democracy'?

That's the part I don't get. If you think about the matter for more than ten seconds you should be able to grasp that majority rule is no guarantee of the classically liberal values just mentioned and other such values that I haven't mentioned. The majority could easily decide that free speech and open inquiry are not values, or are values only if their exercise is not perceived as 'hurtful' by any group of highly sensitive people. 

Democracy is consistent with both the upholding and the abolition of classically liberal values.

It follows that the suppression of dissent (whether from the Left or the Right) is not an attack on democracy but an attack on free speech, open debate, and the untrammeled search for truth.

'Democracy' is treated as an honorific by almost all journalists and pundits. But it does not deserve its high honorific status.

In any case, the USA is not a democracy but a constitutional republic.

Suppose it is true, as Zakaria thinks, that President Trump is attacking the free press, and suppose further that he is out to destroy the Fourth Estate.  (This is plainly not the case, but just suppose.) How would that be an attack on democracy given that the man was democratically and duly elected? 

And how democratic is it when unelected Deep State operatives work day and night to undermine his presidency?

(I am beginning to write like a damned journalist what with the one-sentence paragraphs.  But I have got to get my message out to people corrupted by journalese.)

"The Jury is Still Out": A Silly Sentence When Used by Philosophers

One sometimes comes across 'the jury is still out' in technical philosophical writing. A philosopher might write that 'the jury is still out' on some question, for example, whether the triviality objection to presentism is sustainable.  It's a silly thing to say.

It is first of all obvious that philosophical inquiry, though in some ways similar to a courtroom proceeding, is unlike the latter in a crucial particular: solutions to problems, if they are arrived at at all, are not arrived at by decision. 

It also falsely suggests that a definitive solution to the problem is in the offing. But we all know that that is false. No substantive philosophical question has ever been answered to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners.

Or can you think of one?

Of 'Blind Review' and Pandora's Box

This is a repost from 1 April 2014. I was reminded of it by a missive from Spencer Case who rightly complains about a more recent bit of related academentia.  But if I link to it, you won't read what I have to say below. I will talk about the latest outrage perhaps tomorrow.

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This is not an April Fool's joke.

Blind review is a standard practice employed by editors of professional journals and organizers of academic conferences.  The editor/organizer removes the name of the author from the manuscript before sending it  to the referee or referees for evaluation.  My present concern is not  whether this is a good practice, although I believe it is.  I am concerned with the phrase that describes it and whether or not this phrase can be reasonably found offensive by anyone.  There are those who think that the phrase is offensive and ought to be banned.  Shelley Tremain writes,

For the last few years, I have tried to get the APA [American Philosophical Association] to remove the phrase “blind review” from its publications and website.  The phrase is demeaning to disabled people because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers.  Because the phrase is standardly used in philosophy and other academic CFPs [Calls for Papers], it should become recognized as a cause for great concern.  In short, use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates.  Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way.

Let's consider these claims seriatim.

1. "The phrase is demeaning to disabled people . . . "  Well, I am a disabled person and the phrase is not demeaning to me.  As a result of a birth defect I hear in only one ear.  And of course there are innumerable people who are disabled in different ways who will not find the phrase demeaning. 

2. " . . . because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers."  This is not just false but silly.  No one thinks that blind people cannot be knowers or that knowers cannot be blind. Or at least no sane person thinks that.

Besides, it makes no sense to say that a phrase associates anything with anything.  A foolish person who is precisely not thinking, but associating, might associate blindness with ignorance, but so what?  People associate the damndest things.

To point out the obvious:  if the name has been removed from the manuscript, then the referee literally cannot see it. This is not to say that the referee is blind, or blind with respect to the author's name: he could see it if it were there to see.  'Blind review' means that the reviewer is kept in the dark as to the identity of the author.  That's all! 

3. ". . .  it should become recognized as a cause for great concern."  Great concern?  This is a wild exaggeration even if this issue is of some minor concern.  I say, however, that it is of no concern.  No one is demeaned or slighted or insulted or mocked or ridiculed by the use of the phrase in question.

4. ". . . use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates."  One could argue that the practice of blind review discriminates against those who have made a name for themselves.  But that is the only discrimination in the vicinity.  I said at the top that this post is no joke.  What is risible, however, is that anyone would find 'blind review' to be discriminatory against blind people.

5. "Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way."  This presupposes that the use of the phrase 'blind review' inflicts harm.  This is just silly.  It would be like arguing that  the use of 'black hole' inflicts harm on black people because its use associates blacks with holes or with hos (whores).

In the early-to-mid '80s I attended an APA session organized by a group that called itself PANDORA: Philosophers Against the Nuclear Destruction of Rational Animals.  One of the weighty topics that came up at this particular meeting was the very name 'Pandora.'  Some argued that the name is sexist on the ground that it might remind someone of Pandora's Box, which of course has nothing to do with the characteristic female orifice, but in so reminding them might be taken as a slighting of that orifice.  ('Box' is crude slang for the orifice in question.)  I pointed out in the meeting that the name is just an acronym, and has nothing to do either with Pandora's Box or the characteristic female orifice.  My comment made no impression on the politically correct there assembled.  Later the outfit renamed itself Concerned Philosophers for Peace ". . . because of sexist and exclusionary aspects of the acronym."  (See here) 

Can a Black be a Racist?

More generally, can a non-white be a racist?  It depends on what a racist is. The unfortunate tendency is to bandy the term about undefined. This serves the purposes of those who want an all-purpose verbal cudgel with which to attack their opponents. I will give you my definition, one that ought to appeal to sane and well-intentioned people. 

A racist is a person who harbors an abiding irrational hatred of all or most of the members of one or more other races just because of their racial membership. 

Racism is a standing disposition that manifests itself in hateful or contemptuous words and deeds.  These words and deeds are not rational responses to particular provocations but express a blanket, irrational negative attitude to an entire group. This is why "all or most" figures in my definition. Obviously, hatred of a person of a different race needn't be racist: the hater may have good reason to hate the other person. Racism comes into it when the person is hated because of his membership in the other race.

On the above definition a black can be a racist, and indeed some are.  And so can Hispanics and Asians, including Sarah Jeong.

For the record, I condemn racism as above defined, and you should too. 

If you don't like my definition, do you have any reason not to like it? Do you have a better definition?

Notice that I didn't mention skin color in my definition.  People who should know better regularly conflate skin color with race.  Skin color, however, is at best a phenotypical indicator of race.  Suppose you have two guys, one from India, the other from Africa. Suppose they are dark in color to the same degree. They are both 'blacks' -- black in color to the same degree of blackness. But they are of different races. Therefore, race is not the same as skin color.  

For the politically correct, however, blacks cannot be racists.  The reason, apparently, is that whites oppress blacks but blacks don't oppress whites.  If so, racism is really about power and oppression, and not about race.

If racism is not about race, then why speak of racism as opposed to oppressivism?

After all, some whites oppress other whites. White males oppress white females.  White-collar whites oppress blue-collar whites. 'Coastal' whites oppress 'heartland' whites. You could say that the former 'look down' on the latter as they 'fly over' them. And let's not forget the Jews. Are Jews white? Assume they are. And yet white goyim oppress them.  

White females oppress white females. The good-lookers oppress the plain Janes.  There is a whole lotta oppressin' goin' on.  Or at least the oppressed groups feel oppressed. 

'Liberal' blacks oppress conservative blacks by calling them Uncle Toms, traitors to their race, etc. Are 'liberal' blacks therefore racists?

I am making two main points.

First, on a sane definition of 'racism,' proffered above, non-whites can be racists.  

Second, if your beef is with the oppression or 'denigration' of one group by another, then  'racism' is not the word you want.

Blogging may not be good for me: I am writing like a damned journalist what with these one sentence paragraphs.

God help me. Journalists deserve about as much respect today as lawyers and Catholic priests.  I make an exception for journalists who courageously enter war zones to get the story and sometimes don't come home. 

Phrase of the Day: 'London to a Brick'

I just now encountered this strange expression in Graham Oppy's review of Owen Anderson's, The Clarity of God's Existence: The Ethics of Belief after the Enlightenment. The phrase occurs in this passage:

On the one hand, given that Anderson insists that he cannot be satisfied with ‘a sound proof that is extremely difficult to understand and that is knowable by only a few’ (123), it seems clear that his ‘program’ is bound to fail: for surely it is London to a brick that, if his ‘program’ could be successfully carried out, it would yield a proof that is ‘extremely difficult to understand and knowable only by a few’.

The phrase, apparently not in use in the U. K., is Australian and New Zealand slang for 'it is certain.' Explanation here.

On the Correct Use of 'Begging the Question'

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 I  heard Dennis Prager on his nationally-syndicated radio show use 'beg the question' when what he meant was 'raise the question.'  This is a very common mistake nowadays.

I correct Mr. Prager because I love him.

The visage of Jeff Dunham's 'Walter' signals that a language rant is in the offing should you be averse to such things.

To raise a question is not to beg a question. 'Raise a question' and 'beg a question' ought not be used interchangeably on pain of occluding a distinction essential to clear thought. To raise a question is just to pose it, to bring it before one's mind or before one's audience for consideration. To beg a question, however, is not to pose a question but to reason in a way that presupposes what one needs to prove.

Suppose A poses the question, 'Does Allah exist?' B responds by saying that Allah does exist because his existence is attested in the Koran which Allah revealed to Muhammad. In this example, A raises a question, while B begs the question raised by A. The question is whether or not Allah exists; B's response begs the question by presupposing that Allah does exist. For Allah could not reveal anything to Muhammad unless Allah exists. 

The phrase 'beg the question' is not as transparent as might be hoped. The Latin, petitio principii, is better: begging of the principle. Perhaps the simplest way to express the fallacy in English is by calling it circular reasoning. If I argue that The Los Angeles Times displays liberal bias because its reportage and editorializing show a left-of-center slant, then I reason in a circle, or beg the question. Fans of Greek may prefer hysteron proteron, literally, the later earlier. That is, what is logically posterior, namely, the conclusion, is taken to be logically prior, a premise.

Punchline: Never use 'beg the question' unless you are referring to an informal fallacy in reasoning. If you are raising, asking, posing a question, then say that. Do your bit to preserve our alma mater, the English language. Honor thy mother! Matrix of our thoughts, she is deeper and higher than our thoughts, their sacred Enabler.

Of course, I am but a vox clamantis in deserto.  The battle has already been lost.  So why do I write things like the above?  Because I am a natural-born scribbler who takes pleasure in these largely pointless exercises. 

And perhaps there is a bit of virtue-signaling going on. 

Propaganda

Despite the term's largely pejorative connotation, propaganda is not by definition false or misleading or harmful. Propaganda is anything of a verbal or pictorial nature that is propagated to influence behavior.  Propaganda can consist of truths or falsehoods, good advice or bad, exhortation to good behavior or subornation of bad. Anti-smoking and anti-drug messaging are propaganda but the messages are salutary.  Leftist propaganda is destructive while conservative propaganda inspires ameliorative action.

Here is a very good collection of visual propaganda from yesteryear.

As You Know . . .

. . . there seem to be no limits of logic or sanity on what a 'liberal' will maintain. The latest lunacy is the politically correct prohibition of the phrase 'as you know.'  You must not say this because it might make a snowflake feel inadequate.

Permit me to explain why some of us use the phrase in question.

We use it out of civility and because we understand human nature.  People don't like to be told things. If I tell you that the first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution are called the Bill of Rights, you might think I am talking down to you or lecturing you or suggesting that you are ignorant.  The prefatory 'as you know' gives you the benefit of the doubt. You either know or you don't know. If you know, he you may respond, "Of course." If you don't know, you may admit that you were ignorant of the point or you may remain silent.

'As you know' is a phrase that contributes to civil discourse. But civility is a conservative virtue and it is perhaps too much to expect a leftist to understand it or its value.

Civility demonstrated. Comity enhanced.

To feel slightly inadequate for not knowing something is not bad but good. But persuading people of this in this Age of Feeling may prove difficult.  The purpose of life is not to feel good about oneself. The purpose of education is not to inculcate in students self-esteem but to teach them something so that they will have legitimate grounds for self-esteem.

The Left is destructive in many ways and on many fronts. We of the Coalition of the Sane must oppose them in many ways and on many fronts. 

On the language front we must never bow to their foolish innovations but must proudly speak and write standard English.  

If they take offense, then point out to them that their offense is inappropriately taken.  If a black person objects to 'black hole' or 'niggardly,' then explain their meanings and how any offense taken is wrongly taken.

Say this to leftists: "You are free to speak and write in any silly way you like, but only so long as you allow us to speak and write standard English."

But leftists are a hostile and vicious bunch, unteachable and impervious to reason.  So keep in mind my 2010 aphorism:

It is not reasonable to be reasonable with everyone.  Some need to be met with the hard fist of unreason.  The reasonable know that reason's sphere of application is not limitless.

Herein the germs of yet another argument for Second Amendment rights. Those rights are the concrete back-up to all the others. 

Use and Mention

Tim Kaine, pajama boy, without any breach of logico-linguistic propriety, sez:

Conservative Resistance on the Language Front

One form conservative resistance takes is insistence on one's right to use standard English and oppose innovations. But it ought to be a tolerant resistance, one that permits the politically correct to speak and write as they wish so along that do not try to impose their foolishness upon us. 

Related: Political Correctness and Gender-Neutral Language.  Excerpt:

. . . the use of PC jargon aids and abets the Left's tendency to inject politics into everything.  The Left is totalitarian by its very nature and so it cannot leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized.  For a conservative to employ PC jargon is therefore very foolish.  As I have said dozens of times in these pages, conservatives should not talk like liberals.  Battles in the culture war are often fought and won on linguistic ground, and we conservatives should not acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism.

Phrase of the Day: 'Infra Dig'

I just came across the following sentence in Charles R. Kesler's Claremont Review of Books article, Thinking about Trump:

It is not entirely clear whether his liberal and conservative critics disapprove of Trump because he violates moral law or because he is infra dig.

The 'infra dig' threw me for a moment until I realized it was a popularization of infra dignitatem, 'beneath (one's) dignity.' According to this source, Sir Water Scott in 1825 was the first to use the abbreviation.

I was taught to italicize foreign expressions, which is precisely what the good professor did not do in the sentence quoted. Where's my red pen?

As for the content of the sentence quoted, it is tolerably clear to me that the Never Trumpers (who are of course conservatives of a sort by definition) despise Trump mainly because the man has no class and is therefore infra dignitatem. He is not one of them. He does not have the manners and breeding of a Bill Kristol or a George Will and the rest of the effete, yap-and-scribble, but do nothing, bow-tie brigade.  He is an outsider and an interloper who threatens their privileges and perquisites.  Better Hillary and the status quo than a shake-up and take-on of the Deep State and its enablers.

On the other hand, leftists, most of them anyway, don't give a damn about the moral law as it pertains to marital fidelity and sexual behavior with the possible exception of rape. These types don't object to Trump because of locker-room talk and affairs. After all, they tolerate it in themselves and their heroes such as the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Clinton. What they are doing is right out of Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals, in particular, #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."  

Nor do Leftists much care that Trimp is infra dig. What leftists object to are his policies and programs, but instead of addressing them, they attack the man for failing to honor values that they themselves do not accept so as to discredit him among his supporters. 

The Fantasy of Addiction

As long as this blog has been online, 14 years now, I have railed against the misuse of the the word 'addiction.' Thanks to Dave Lull, I am pleased to see that Peter Hitchens takes a similar line  in a First Things article. Excerpt:

The chief difficulty with the word “addiction” is the idea that it describes a power greater than the will. If it exists in the way we use it and in the way our legal and medical systems assume it exists, then free will has been abolished. I know there are people who think and argue this is so. But this is not one of those things that can be demonstrated by falsifiable experiment. In the end, the idea that humans do not really have free will is a contentious opinion, not an objective fact.

So to use the word “addiction” is to embrace one side in one of those ancient unresolved debates that cannot be settled this side of the grave. To decline to use it, by contrast, is to accept that all kinds of influences, inheritances, and misfortunes may well operate on us, and propel us towards mistaken, foolish, wrong, and dangerous actions or habits. It is to leave open the question whether we can resist these forces. I am convinced that declining the word “addiction” is both the only honest thing to do, and the only kind and wise thing to do, when we are faced with fellow creatures struggling with harmful habits and desires. It is all very well to relieve someone of the responsibility for such actions, by telling him his body is to blame. But what is that solace worth if he takes it as permission to carry on as before? Once or twice I have managed to explain to a few of my critics that this is what I am saying. But generally they are too furious, or astonished by my sheer nerve, to listen.

Read it all.

Related: The Case for Nicotine

The Politicization of the FBI

Joseph E. diGenova:

Over the past year, facts have emerged that suggest there was a plot by high-ranking FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials in the Obama administration, acting under color of law, to exonerate Hillary Clinton of federal crimes and then, if she lost the election, to frame Donald Trump and his campaign for colluding with Russia to steal the presidency. This conduct was not based on mere bias, as has been widely claimed, but rather on deeply felt animus toward Trump and his agenda.

In the course of this plot, FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, Strzok’s paramour and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, FBI General Counsel James Baker, and DOJ senior official Bruce Ohr—perhaps among others—compromised federal law enforcement to such an extent that the American public is losing trust. A recent CBS News poll finds 48 percent of Americans believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia collusion probe is “politically motivated,” a stunning conclusion. And 63 percent of polled voters in a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll believe that the FBI withheld vital information from Congress about the Clinton and Russia collusion investigations.

Read the rest.

Is 'politicization' the right word? Can one politicize what is already political by its very nature? (The FBI is part of the government; the government is a political entity; ergo, the FBI is political and essentially so; one cannot politicize, i.e., make political, what cannot exist except as political. Might it not be better to say that Comey, McCabe, and the gang are using the FBI for partisan purposes?

I mean: you wouldn't want to say that when functioning properly and in accordance with the Constitution the government and its branches and bureaus is apolitical, would you?

You are free to dismiss these questions as the ruminations of a pedant.

See here.

The Ideology of Illegal Immigration

An outstanding column by VDH. Excerpts:

The entire vocabulary of illegal immigration has become Orwellian. Once descriptive nouns and adjectives such as “alien” and “illegal” have melted into “undocumented” and “immigrant” and then into just “migrant,” ostensibly to mask the reality of both legal status and the fact that migrants go in one direction — and there is an existential difference between immigrants and emigrants.

Excellent point about 'migrant.'  The term blurs the distinction between those who emigrate and those who immigrate as if there is no difference. But as Hanson says, the difference is "existential."  What could that mean? Well, no emigrants but some immigrants pose an existential threat to us, not so much to our physical existence, though I wouldn't point this out to the parents of Kate Steinle, but to our way of life, which is more important.

Here, then,  is another example of what mendacious scum 'liberals' or 'progressives' are.  Instead of addressing the issues in an honest and forthright way, they commit acts of linguistic hijacking.

Remember: he who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.

Once someone makes a decision to enter a country illegally — his first decision as an incoming alien — and thus breaks a U.S. law with impunity, then most subsequent decisions are naturally shaped by the idea of exemption. Zealots argue that entering the U.S. illegally is merely a civil infraction. But the IRS in 2017 identified some 1.2 million identity-theft cases, in which illegal aliens had employed illegitimate or inconsistent social-security numbers to file tax returns — and implicitly thereby cause innumerable problems for the U.S. tax system.

Professor Hanson should have pointed out that illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. Improper entry comes under the criminal code. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime. 

If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.

So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code. 

Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.

So much of the discussion of illegal immigration is predicated not just on fantasy, but on Soviet-style censorship, and not just of speech, but of our very thoughts. Taboo are suggestions that illegal immigration could be a prime reason that California now has the highest basket of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation; the highest number of welfare recipients (one of three in the United States), with a fifth of the state living below the poverty level; and now a fourth of all hospital admittances found to be suffering from diabetes or prediabetes; or that national rankings of infrastructure quality place the state nearly last in the country.

 Talk of race has approached something like Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass, in which everything is upside down. “La Raza” — until recently the nomenclature of the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy organization — has supposedly nothing to do with race, while others who would never have an odious desire to use its odious English equivalent, “The Race,” are deemed racists for their objections to La Raza terminology.

Residency is deliberately conflated with citizenship, as if the two are legally and morally equivalent. But again, nowhere else in the world is this true, and certainly not in Mexico. I have lived abroad for over two years. As a guest in Athens, I followed Greek politics closely. I paid steep Greek sales taxes and assorted fees and tariffs as a legal resident alien. But at no time did I imagine that taxes or my physical presence as a lawful guest on Greek soil allowed me to interfere with the politics of my host, much less to issue demands on Athens, or to give me de facto the same legal rights as Greek citizens. As a legal alien, I surely did not think I could vote. I knew better than to tell Greeks that their country was not to my taste. And I knew fellow aliens who overstayed visas, worked without permits, and did not register as foreign residents. At least before the days of the latest incarnations of the European Union, the resulting fines were stiff, and expulsions were uncontested.

Once again one sees what utter misological filth these leftists are. They will engage in any kind of obfuscation to win while we waste time being polite.

I have made the point recently that the constant yapping about 'democracy' aids and abets the conflation of residency with citizenship.  Leftists just love that word. When you hear it from their mouths know that nasty obfuscation and sophistry is on the way.

When Jerry Brown or Nancy Pelosi lectures the state on its illiberality, or on the immigration sins of Donald Trump, or the advantages of nullification and a sanctuary state, we assume that these are just the penultimate chest poundings and virtue signals of rich septuagenarians about to go into apartheid retirements in Napa or Grass Valley.

In that context, all of their legacies above make perfect sense.

Indeed, they do. These ancient knuckleheads will depart the scene with their virtue intact while leaving behind a crap hole for others to live in. I can't bring myself to believe that these two clowns are animated by evil intentions; the consequences of their folly, however, are evil in excelsis. Pelosi in particular is not so much evil as just plain stupid. It says a lot about the electorate that she should have had so much power for so long.  

Language Rant

It is time again for another language rant. The visage of Jeff Dunham's  'Walter' alerts you to what's coming in case you cannot stomach this sort of thing.

1) If you know English, you know that the correct response to 'thank you' is 'you're welcome,' not 'thank you.'  So why does almost every guest on Tucker Carlson's show respond to his 'thank you for coming on' with 'thank you'? 

That pisses me off. Only one guest recently made the correct response.  I am of course not objecting to the following sort of exchange:

'Thank you, Mark Steyn, for that brilliant analysis. You're welcome, Tucker. And thank you for inviting me on.'

2) To peruse a document is to read it carefully and thoroughly or to examine a matter carefully or at length.  See here:

Note that peruse means ‘read’, typically with an implication of thoroughness and care. It does not mean ‘read through quickly; glance over’, as in documents will be perused rather than analysed thoroughly.

Prescriptivism rules.

Related:

58 Most Commonly Misused Words and Phrases

A list by Steven Pinker. Refreshingly prescriptivist. I agree with every example. 

A list by Steven Pinker. Refreshingly prescriptivist. I agree with every example. 

For a 'Liberal,' Gun Control = Gun Confiscation

Suppose there occurs some horrendous incident of roadway carnage. Nobody says, 'We need traffic laws.'  Nobody competent in English says that because it conversationally implies that there are no traffic laws.  What a person might sensibly say is that we need additional traffic laws, for example, laws outlawing texting while driving.  

So why do liberals reliably say, whenever there is a school shooting, or a similar outrage, 'We need gun control'? 'Gun control' refers to gun control laws of which there are many at the Federal, State, and local levels. Why would a liberal say we need gun control when it is obvious that there is plenty of gun control?

Because, for a 'liberal,' 'gun control is code for 'gun confiscation.' It is just that they, or most of them, lack the intellectual honesty to state plainly what they are for.

One of the reasons Hillary lost to the unlikely Donald Trump is because of her mendacity on this very issue. A stealth ideologue to the core, her speeches were nothing but bromides, blather, and bushwa bereft of ideas and concrete proposals. She dared not say what she really had in mind in prosecution of Obama's destructive project of "fundamental transformation." Luckily, the Clinton dynasty is at an end as is the Bush dynasty. We can thank Trump for having put paid to both.

Will the 'Collusionistas' Now Apologize to Donald Trump?

Fat chance.

Being a leftist means never having to say you're sorry. Did the Left ever apologize for its support of 'Uncle Joe' Stalin? Did they ever admit that the Rosenbergs were, in 'fifties parlance, 'atomic spies' for the Soviet Union? My astute readers are equipped to supply further examples.

The Mueller indictment finds no wrongdoing by Trump or members of his administration:

Despite a 37-page indictment with a long narrative on a coordinated Russian campaign of interference, the most newsworthy fact comes from the carefully placed adjective “unwitting.” It confirms that the special counsel has found no knowing coordination or collusion between these hackers and Trump officials. 

Leftists will not admit that they were wrong. What I expect them to do is to change the subject without making any admission that they have changed the subject.

They will shift from the charge that Trump and Co. colluded with the Russians to swing the election in his favor to the entirely different charge that Putin and the boys tried to interfere with the internal politics of the USA.  

The attempt by the Left to smear Trump stank from the very beginning. Many of us asked an obvious question at the outset, a question to which no good answer was ever given: Why on earth would Putin want the alpha male Donald Trump in office rather than the feckless Hillary?  And given that all the pollsters were predicting that Trump would be crushed, why would Putin think he had any chance of aiding Trump?

Another thing some of us noted right at the beginning was the use of the meaningless phrase, 'hack the election.'  You can hack into an e-mail account, but how do you hack an election?  It makes no bloody sense unless you inflate the phrase to mean 'influence the election.' But then every political blogger, every commentator, and indeed every voter was attempting to 'hack the election.'

Language matters.

Fake News: 18 School Shootings Since January 1, 2018. The Importance of Definition

The question of how many school shootings have occurred in a given place over a given period of time is an empirical question. But to answer the empirical question, one must first have answered a logically prior question, which is non-empirical. This is the conceptual question as to the definition of 'school shooting.' 

What counts as a school shooting? The supervised, safe, Saturday morning on-campus firing of BB guns at targets? The 'discharge' of a pea shooter? The shotgunning of ducks in  a pond on a school's grounds?  The killing of a stray deer with bow and arrow?

Suppose some punk fires a .223 round at a window of a school in the middle of the night when no one is there from an off-campus position. That could be called a school shooting too. A physical part of the school was shot at.

Or let us say that a distraught person commits suicide by shooting himself while seated in a car parked in a lot of what was formerly a school. This is an a actual case that was cited as a 'school shooting'! See linked article infra. Does this count as a school shooting? Not to someone who is intellectually honest.  

Clearly, what most people mean by a school shooting is an attempted mass shooting in a school or on the premises of a school by one or more assailants armed with deadly weapons, a shooting of students or teachers or administrative personnel that causes death or injury.

That definition no doubt needs tweaking, but if we adopt something like it, then, since January 1st we have in these United States more like three, count 'em, three school shootings. Three too many, but even a liberal gun-grabber knows that 3 < 18. 

Across the board, lying leftists bandy about terms without explicit definitions, or with over-broad definitions. They do this willfully to further their destructive agendas. If you are a decent human being you will do your bit to oppose them.

Now go read the Politifact article.

Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is that My Fault?

Suppose a white person uses the phrase 'black hole' in the presence of a black person either in its literal cosmological meaning or in some objectively inoffensive metaphorical sense, and the black person takes offense and complains that the phrase is 'racially insensitive.' Actual case here. Compare that with a case in which a white person uses 'nigger' in the presence of a black person.

I have just marked out two ends of a semantic spectrum. 'Black hole' used either literally or in some not-too-loose analogy to the literal meaning — as in 'black hole' used to refer to a windowless office — cannot be taken by any rational person as a racial slur. For 'black' in 'black hole' has nothing to do with race. But 'nigger' used by a white person is a racial slur.

It is worth noting that I did not use 'nigger' in the immediately preceding sentence: I mentioned it. It is a standard distinction and an important one if you value clarity of thought.

How should we explain the difference between 'black hole' and 'nigger'? Here is a suggestion: the latter term is objectively offensive while the former is not: it is merely subjectively offensive. It is offensive only to some inappropriately sensitive and irrational people of minimal linguistic competence to whom no apology is owed and to whom no apology should be given. From this I infer that if I say something that you find offensive, that is not necessarily my fault. In many cases it is your fault. For example, if you do not know the meaning of 'black hole,' then you are either stupid or egregiously ill-informed, which fact is your problem, not mine.

What I have just written is boringly obvious. And yet it must be said in these politically correct times. Even squishy latte-sipping bien-pensant liberals should be able to wrap their pointy heads around it, the point is so simple.

Now for a more interesting case. Some blacks don't want to be called 'blacks.' They want to be called 'African-Americans.' But I find the latter term offensive to my conservative sensibilities, opposed as I am to the hyphenated American. Bang on the hyperlink to see my reasons. Now civility, though a virtue largely invisible to leftists, is prized by conservatives, and I want to be civil. Part of being civil is respecting others' feelings. But truth and reason trump feelings.

Therefore I refuse to call blacks 'African-Americans.' My refusal is principled and has nothing to with 'insensitivity' or racism. If a black person takes offense, then it is his fault and his problem.

Suppose a white person uses the phrase 'black hole' in the presence of a black person either in its literal cosmological meaning or in some objectively inoffensive metaphorical sense, and the black person takes offense and complains that the phrase is 'racially insensitive.' Actual case here. Compare that with a case in which a white person uses 'nigger' in the presence of a black person.

I have just marked out two ends of a semantic spectrum. 'Black hole' used either literally or in some not-too-loose analogy to the literal meaning — as in 'black hole' used to refer to a windowless office — cannot be taken by any rational person as a racial slur. For 'black' in 'black hole' has nothing to do with race. But 'nigger' used by a white person is a racial slur.

It is worth noting that I did not use 'nigger' in the immediately preceding sentence: I mentioned it. It is a standard distinction and an important one if you value clarity of thought.

How should we explain the difference between 'black hole' and 'nigger'? Here is a suggestion: the latter term is objectively offensive while the former is not: it is merely subjectively offensive. It is offensive only to some inappropriately sensitive and irrational people of minimal linguistic competence to whom no apology is owed and to whom no apology should be given. From this I infer that if I say something that you find offensive, that is not necessarily my fault. In many cases it is your fault. For example, if you do not know the meaning of 'black hole,' then you are either stupid or egregiously ill-informed, which fact is your problem, not mine.

What I have just written is boringly obvious. And yet it must be said in these politically correct times. Even squishy latte-sipping bien-pensant liberals should be able to wrap their pointy heads around it, the point is so simple.

Now for a more interesting case. Some blacks don't want to be called 'blacks.' They want to be called 'African-Americans.' But I find the latter term offensive to my conservative sensibilities, opposed as I am to the hyphenated American. Bang on the hyperlink to see my reasons. Now civility, though a virtue largely invisible to leftists, is prized by conservatives, and I want to be civil. Part of being civil is respecting others' feelings. But truth and reason trump feelings.

Therefore I refuse to call blacks 'African-Americans.' My refusal is principled and has nothing to with 'insensitivity' or racism. If a black person takes offense, then it is his fault and his problem.

'Anglo-American' a 'Dog Whistle'?

Charles C. W. Cooke patiently explains why it isn't and why it is "moronic" for people such as U. S. Senator Brian Schatz to think so.

But are such people stupid and/or uniformed? Now some are stupid and some are uninformed. But a significant number know what they are doing. A better label for them would be 'domestic enemies.'

Use, Mention, 'Quotation' Marks, and Political Correctness

The title of a recent Weekly Standard article reads:

Professor Uses 'N-Word,' Student Shouts 'F-You,' 'Free Speech' Class Canceled at Princeton.

I would write it like this:

Professor mentions N-word [no inverted commas], Student Shouts 'F-You,' [correct use of inverted commas for quotation], 'Free Speech' Class Cancelled at Princeton [correct use of inverted commas as sneer quotes].

Pedantry aside, the real problem is in the following paragraph:

Last week Prof. Rosen received national attention for using the N-word in this class on freedom of expression. Some students walked out and protested the term’s use. One report, cited in Princeton’s main campus newspaper, says that Rosen asked, “What is worse, a white man punching a black man, or a white man calling a black man a n****r?” And when Rosen was met with disagreement of his use of the N-word, and on his continued use of the term in the academic setting, he said, he would use it, “if I think it’s necessary.”

Rosen didn't use the N-word, he mentioned it.  Rosen was talking about the word 'nigger' and asking whether it would be worse for a white man to punch a black man or to apply the word 'nigger' to him. That is a perfectly legitimate question and there is nothing racist about it.

There is also nothing racist about my mentioning of the word in question in the second-to-last sentence.  I am talking about the word in the way I would be talking about it were I to say that it is disyllabic and consists of six letters.  I am not applying it to anyone. 

Which is worse, to punch a Jew (without provocation) or to apply 'kike' to him? Does it make one an anti-Semite to ask this question? Obviously not.

Read the rest to fully savor how the Left has destroyed the universities.  If you are thinking of an academic career in a non-STEM field you may want to think twice. 

Can a Coin Toss be Racist?

Why not? If everything is racist, then so is a coin toss. On the other hand, if everything is racist, then nothing is racist in any useful sense of 'racist.'

Horribile dictu, there is nothing so stupid that some race-baiting leftist won't say it.

I have a whole category on contrast arguments. Said category is most felicitously appellated, Contrast Arguments.

Democrats Undermine the Foundations of Rational Discourse

Rational discourse requires observance of a few simple procedural rules. One of the most basic is to use words and phrases in their commonly accepted senses and to refrain from distorting them for partisan purposes.  Take 'chain migration.' According to Wikipedia, a usually reliable source, 

Chain migration is a term used by demographers since the 1960s^[1] to refer to the social process by which migrants from a particular town follow others from that town to a particular destination city or neighborhood. The destination may be in another country or in a new, usually urban, location within the same country.

Chain migration can be defined as a “movement in which prospective migrants learn of opportunities, are provided with transportation, and have initial accommodation and employment arranged by means of primary social relationships with previous migrants.”^[1] Or, more simply put: "The dynamic underlying 'chain migration' is so simple that it sounds like common sense: People are more likely to move to where people they know live, and each new immigrant makes people they know more likely to move there in turn."

As you can see, 'chain migration' is a phrase that has been in use for a long time. It is no more a racist slur than 'black hole' is.  Why then does Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D NY) say it is?  You know the answer.

Jonah Goldberg:

A more recent example comes in the novel claim that the term “chain migration” is a racist shibboleth. Chain migration is — or was — an utterly neutral term for the process by which legal immigrants sponsor members of their extended family to become citizens as well.

Rep Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted recently, “Reminder: ‘chain migration’ is a made-up term by the hard-line anti-immigration crowd. Its purpose is to dehumanize immigrants. If you're using that word, you're declaring a side.”

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refuses to even use the phrase. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., insists the term — which he used as recently as 2010 — is offensive because African Americans came here in chains. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, insists that " 'chain migration' is an epithet. It was invented. The term is ‘family immigration,’ and it’s the way America has literally always worked.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., made a figurative clown of herself when she literally said, “Let's be very clear: When someone uses the phrase 'chain migration,' it is intentional in trying to demonize families, literally trying to demonize families and make it a racist slur.”

This is just more evidence that our political opponents are not fellow citizens with whom we can have productive discussions. They are domestic enemies and we are in a war. You may not want to accept that. I didn't for a long time. But the fact is now unblinkable.

Don't imagine that you can reason with them. They will ignore what you say and go right back to the recitation of their defamatory litany: racist, white supremacist, xenophobe, . . . . You need to disembarrass yourself of the notion that they are basically decent people. They are not. 

"But that's not Who We are!"

Well, who are we then?  That piece of liberal misdirection and obfuscation, the vacuous phrase, 'Who we are,' is in need of sober critique. Paul Gottfried provides it. Here is a chunk of his text:

It seems statements can only contradict “who we are” if they’re expressed past the point in time that the media decided they were no longer allowed. So President Clinton was not being homophobic when he pushed successfully for the Defense of Marriage Act. That’s because he did that in 1996, before gay marriage became an integral part of “who we are.” And Richard Durbin was not being un-American when he called for ending “chain migration” on the floor of the Senate in 2010, since the Left had not yet made the term and the policy it refers to incompatible with “who we are.” Durbin would later go after President Trump for using that exact same expression because it offends black citizens whose ancestors “were brought here in chains.” Ditto when the very liberal Senator Edward Kennedy assured critics of the 1965 immigration reform bill that the legislation would not “upset the ethnic mix” in the United States and would “not inundate America with immigrants from…the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia.” Back then, the left could say such things without being in violation of “who we are.” That’s because it was not yet going after Donald Trump.

I would add that when such stealth ideologues as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Obama, Durbin and the rest seemed to have changed their views, that was not what was really going on. They were leftists all along. They merely mouthed sane positions on marriage and immigration because it was politically advantageous for them to do so at the time.

Age Quod Agis

Age quod agis is a well-known saying which is a sort of Latin call to mindfulness: do what you are doing. Be here now in the activity at hand.

Legend has it that Johnny Ringo was an educated man.  (Not so: a story for later.) But so he is depicted over and over. In this scene from Tombstone, the best of the movies about Doc Holliday and the shoot-out at the O. K. Corral, Ringo trades Latinisms with the gun-totin' dentist, who was indeed an educated man and a fearless and deadly gunslinger to boot, his fearlessness a function of his 'consumption.'

I don't mean his consumption of spirits, but his tuberculosis. His was the courage of an embittered man, close to death.

The translations in the video clip leave something to be desired. Age quod agis gets translated as 'do what you do best'; the literal meaning, however, is do what you are doing. Age is in the imperative mood; quod is 'what'; agis is the second person singular present tense of agere and means: 'you do' or 'you are doing.'

Curiously, Doc Holliday did not die with his boots on. He died in bed.

Related articles

Maverick Philosopher: Latin Versus Italian: Differences

Word of the Day: Conurbation

"An extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities." See here.

You weren't taught Latin in high school? Then you were cheated by 'progressive' idiots. But if you were taught, then you know that the Latin  for 'city' is urbs, urbis. Knowing this, you are in a position reasonably to guess the meaning of our word of the day. And knowing a little Latin, you will be helped in your understanding of 'suburban' and 'urbane' and 'urbicide.' 

Example:

By the mid-1960s, the character of the region was changing rapidly. A carpet of housing subdivisions, shopping malls, parking lots, freeways, and gas stations was being rolled out from LA. Soon the orange groves and bean fields disappeared, and Orange County became one vast undifferentiated conurbation. It was difficult to tell when you left one town and entered another. 

By the way, the author, the philosopher Lee Hardy, is a good writer as witness his "mid-1960s," with no apostrophe. But an apostrophe is needed in the following: 'mid-'60s.' I also invite you to notice that when I am quoting someone I use double quotation marks, but when I am mentioning an expression, or using an expression in an extended sense, I use single quotation marks. I warmly recommend my conventions inasmuch as they are eminently rational. But you are free to disagree without fear of being shot.

Long before I became a Phoenician, I was a Los Angeleno. So I know something about conurbation. Luckily, I live at the far Eastern edge of the Phoenix metropolitan region, right up against the Superstition Wilderness where conubation hereabouts stops, Gott sei dank.

As that great American Henry David Thoreau once said, in the pages of The Atlantic (June 1862) when that magazine was worth reading, in his essay "Walking," 

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.

Again and again, people who cannot read what is on the page substitute 'wilderness' for 'wildness.' People see what they want to see, or expect to see. Here is an example of double butchery I found recently:

In wilderness is the preservation of Mankind.

(Warren Macdonald, A Test of Will, Greystone Books, 2004, p. 145.) 

Of 'Whither' and 'Whence'

I had a teacher in the fifth grade who, when one of us inappropriately wandered off, would query, "Whither goest thou?" alluding, as I did not realize at the time, to the Gospel of John (13:36):

Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

'Whither' means to where just as 'whence' mean from where. (Please avoid the pleonasm of 'from whence.') The distinction is obliterated by the promiscuous use of 'where' for both. That cannot be good from a logical point of view. It is therefore right and fitting and conducive unto clarity that my favorite antediluvian curmudgeon, the Laudator Temporis Acti, should complain:

The use of whither is withering away in English, alas, just like whence, although both words usefully distinguish notions that we now force where alone to bear, e.g. in the New International Version of John 13.36:

Simon Peter asked him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied, "Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later."

A Linguistic Curiosity

Such words as 'poetess' and 'actress' are falling into disuse: the grammatically masculine 'poet' and 'actor' are now used gender-neutrally for both sexes. Why then the stink over the gender-neutral use of 'he' to cover both males and females as in such sentences as in 'He who hesitates is lost'?  If there is no objection to applying grammatically masculine nouns to females, why the objection to applying the grammatically masculine pronoun 'he' to females? 

God, Pronouns, and Anthropomorphism

I was delighted to hear from an old student of mine from 35 years ago. He writes,

In your writings, you often refer to God in pronouns bearing gender.  Does such language result in God’s anthropomorphism?

I would reformulate the question as follows:

In your writings, whenever you refer to God using a third-person pronoun, you use the masculine pronoun 'he.' Does this use of 'he' promote an anthropomorphic conception of God?

I would say No. It is true that the pronoun I use in reference to God is 'he.' And because I write almost always as a philosopher, I do not write upper-case 'He' in reference to God except at the beginning of a sentence. This is not a sign of disrespect; it arises from a desire not to mix the strictly philosophical with the pious.

Does a use of 'he' in reference to God imply that God is of the male sex? Not at all. Otherwise one would have to say that a use of 'she' in reference to a ships and airplanes implies that these things  are of the female sex.  But ships and airplances, being inanimate material objects, are of no sex.*

God too is of no sex, but for a different reason: he is wholly immaterial.  (I will suggest a qualification below.) Still, we need to be able to refer to God. Assuming we don't want to keep repeating 'God,' we need pronouns. 'It' is out. 'He or she' makes no sense. Why not then use 'he'? Note that any argument against 'he' would also work against 'she.' 

As a conservative, I of course oppose silly and unnecessary innovations; so I use 'he' to refer to God.  For a conservative, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional practices: the burden of proof is on the innovator.

One must distinguish between grammatical gender, which is a property of words, and sex which is a property of some referents of words.  As already noted, if one uses 'she' to refer to something it doesn't follow that the thing referred to is female. That shows that grammatical gender and sex come apart.  One ought to bear in mind that gender is first and foremost a grammatical category. Sex is a biological category.  I have no objection to talk of gender roles as (in part) socio-cultural constructs, which involves an extended use of 'gender.' 

That grammatical gender and sex come apart  is also the case with nouns. In English, the nouns 'table' and 'boat' have no gender, but in Italian (and other languages such as German) their counterparts do: tavolo is masculine while barca is feminine. This is reflected in the difference between the appropriate definite articles, il and la, where in English we have the gender-neutral 'the.'   But while tavolo and barca are masculine and feminine respectively, their referents are sexless.  So again grammatical gender and sex come apart.

So when I use 'he' in reference to God there is no implication that God is of the male sex.

It is also worth pointing out that an anthropomorphic conception of God is not a concept of God as a male, but as a human being. So if I use 'he' in reference to God am I implying that God is  a human being?  No. But he is more like a human being than he is like any other type of animal or any inanimate object. So 'he' is an appropriate pronoun to use.

But why 'he' rather than 'she'? 

Recall that when his disciples asked Jesus how they should pray, he taught them the "Our Father." Was Jesus suggesting that we are all the biological offspring of God? Of course not. Still, he used 'Father' or the equivalent in Aramaic.

Is there a hint of sexism here? If there is, it would seem to be mitigated By God's having a mother, the Virgin Mary: Sancte Maria, mater dei . . . . Mary is not merely the mother of Jesus, but the mother of God:

According to St. John (1:15) Jesus is the Word made flesh, the Word Who assumed human nature in the womb of Mary. As Mary was truly the mother of Jesus, and as Jesus was truly God from the first moment of His conception, Mary is truly the mother of God. (here)

This divine motherhood does not elevate Mary above God, for she remains a creature, even after her Assumption into heaven. She is not worshipped or adored (latria) but she is due a special sort of veneration called hyperdulia, dulia being the name for the veneration appropriate to saints.  Or at least that is the Catholic doctrine.

Is God Immaterial?

There is another curious theological wrinkle. Christ is supposed to have ascended into heaven body and soul. The Ascension was therefore not a process of de-materialization or disembodiment. Christ returned to the Godhead body and soul. The Ascension did not undo the Incarnation: returning to the Godhead, Christ did not become disincarnate. After the Word (Logos, Second Person of the Trinity) became flesh and dwelt among us it remained flesh even after it ceased to dwell among us.

This seems to imply that after the Ascension  matter was imported into the Godhead, perhaps not the gross matter of the sublunary plane, but matter nonetheless.  But not only that: the matter imported into the Godhead, even if appropriately transfigured or spiritualized, was the matter of a male animal. For Jesus was male.  

So while we tend to think of God and the Persons of the Trinity as wholly immaterial and sexless when we prescind from the Incarnation and Ascension, God after these events includes a material and indeed sexually male element. This is a further reason to think that 'he' is an appropriate pronoun to apply to God.

But what if God is Being Itself?

According to Aquinas, Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. God is self-subsistent Being. He is not an ens among entia but esse itself. He is Being itself in its primary instance.

Is it appropriate to refer to such a metaphysical absolute as 'he'? Not entirely, but 'he' is better than any other pronoun I can think of.  Of course, one could coin a pronoun for use only in reference to God, say 'de.' But as I said, conservatives are chary of innovations, especially when they are unnecessary. Just use 'he' but realize what you are doing. 

___________________

* Is 'he' ever used to refer to what is not a male animal? I should think so.  Suppose a man gives his primary male characteristic the name 'Max.' He may go on to say: 'Old Max ain't what he used to be.'  This use of 'he' refers to the penis of a human being which is a proper part of a male human being. But I should think that no proper part of a human being is a human being. 

Word of the Day: Camarilla

cam·a·ril·la

ˌkaməˈrilə,-ˈrēə/

noun

noun: camarilla; plural noun: camarillas

1. a small group of people, especially a group of advisers to a ruler or politician, with a shared, typically nefarious, purpose.

   "a military camarilla that has lost any sense of political reality"

Origin

mid 19th century: from Spanish, diminutive of camara ‘chamber.’

 

Source.

Tavis Smiley Too? 'Inappropriate' Sexual Conduct?

The witch hunt is on and the Left eats its own.  PBS has suspended distribution of Smiley's late-night talk show. I don't think much of Smiley's opinions, you understand, but I fear that we may end up like the Soviet Union or China under the Cultural Revolution. Don't tell me it can't happen here; just look at the outrages that have already happened here. From the L. A. Times:

“I have the utmost respect for women and celebrate the courage of those who have come forth to tell their truth,” Smiley said. “To be clear, I have never groped, coerced, or exposed myself inappropriately to any workplace colleague in my entire broadcast career, covering six networks over 30 years.” [emphasis added]

If Smiley had exposed himself appropriately, then no problem?

By the way, what is it about liberals that makes them use 'inappropriately' inappropriately?

Whipping out your schlong in front of a female colleague is not inappropriate behavior but morally wrong behavior.  Why can't you liberal boneheads say that? Too 'judgmental'? But that's what you are doing: you are making moral judgments. Did Bubba behave 'inappropriately' with Juanita Broderick? But if Clinton had shown up at a black-tie event in a swimsuit, then you could say, appropriately, that  his behavior was inappropriate.

'Inappropriate' is far too weak a word for rape and sexual intimidation. On the other hand, 'reach out' is too strong a phrase for the uses to which it is put by contemporary language morons. If I hear that your wife has suddenly died, I may 'reach out' to you in sympathy and with an offer of assistance. But if I phone you to inform you that one of your tail lights is out, I haven't 'reached out' to you.

Finally, Smiley's 'tell their truth' is quite the howler. For his accusers are (at least) telling their truth.  Truth is truth. There is no such thing as his or hers or their truth. 

Of Coulter and Kant, Screwed Pooches, and Milked He Goats

Ann Coulter:

Everyone who screwed the pooch on this one better realize fast: All that matters is immigration. It's all that matters to the country, and it's all that matters for winning elections.

She's right: read what she has to say. 

What caught my eye, however, was the expression 'screw the pooch.'  I now send you to Slate for an explanation of its meaning, thereby proving that that site is good for something.

The irrepressible Coulter also avails herself of the expression, 'milk a he-goat':

We'll have to watch helplessly as "establishment Republicans" fight "anti-establishment Republicans" over the right to milk a he-goat. Both sides will lose, and Democrats will sweep Congress and destroy our country.

Now that's a very old expression; I first encountered it in Kant in a particularly delightful form at A 58 = B 83 of his Critique of Pure Reason:

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if the question is absurd in itself and demands unnecessary answers, then, besides the embarrassment of the one who proposes it, it also has the disadvantage of misleading the incautious listener into absurd answers, and presenting the ridiculous sight (as the ancients said) of one man milking a he-goat while the other holds a sieve underneath.

The true Kant aficionado will of course know that Kant invoked this simile already in his pre-Critical period in his 1770 Latin Inaugural Dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis.  See, for the Latin, Daniel S. Robinson, "Kant and Demonax--A Footnote to the History of Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1950), pp. 374-379.

Below, Professor Robinson misspells Norman Kemp Smith's name. In an age of literary irresponsibility we need more pedants like me. Or maybe not.

Irony Deficiency

Some suffer from an iron deficiency; the cure is straightforward. Others from an irony deficiency; I know of no cure.  I wrote the other day:

Long-time reader E. C. sends us to rapper Joyner Lucas, I'm Not Racist. It warms my heart this holiday season to see how wonderfully race relations have improved since the '60s in this country.

The second sentence displays irony.  The meaning I intend, and succeed in conveying to those not suffering from irony deficiency,  is the opposite of what the sentence itself expresses when considered in itself, apart from context, simply as a sentence of English.

Irony thus exploits the fact that speaker's meaning and sentence meaning can come apart. What a speaker or writer of a sentence means by the utterance or inscription of a sentence sometimes differs from what the sentence itself means considered apart from a context of use.

Schopenhauer in Italian on Schadenfreude, La Gioia per il Danno Altrui

If to feel envy is to feel bad when another does well, what should we call the emotion of feeling good when another suffers misfortune? There is no word in English for this as far as I know, but in German it is called Schadenfreude. This word is used in English from time to time, and it is one every educated person should know. It means joy (Freude) at another injuries (Schaden). The great Schopenhauer, somewhere in Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, remarks that while envy (Neid) is human, Schadenfreude is diabolical.

Exactly right. There is something fiendish in feeling positive glee at another’s misery. This is not to imply that envy is not a hateful emotion to be avoided as far as possible. Invidia, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. From the Latin invidia comes ‘invidious comparison’ which just means an envious comparison.

My translation of the Italian:

To feel envy is human, but to taste joy at the injury of others is diabolical.

Language Rant: Taking Responsibility and Taking Credit

Another note for benighted journalists who have, but too often do not honor, their duty to preserve and protect the English language in all her expressive and thought-guiding glory.

What one takes responsibility for may be either good or bad. What one takes credit for, however, is good. Terrorist acts are not good.

Therefore, do not report that ISIS 'took credit' for an atrocity but that they 'took responsibility' for it.

Walter (HT: Jeff Dunham) is the MavPhil 'icon' of the language rant. 'Icon,' however, needs it own rant. Later.

A Simple Point of Logic Journalists Ought to be Aware Of

One often encounters sentences like this one:

There are many arenas in which all ideas are not considered equal.

This example is from a recent piece in Vox. I could give further recent examples, but one is enough. To simplify, consider just the core thought:

All ideas are not considered equal.

Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what the core thought is. For the sentence is ambiguous as between 

1) No ideas are considered equal

and

2) Some ideas are not considered equal.

The thoughts (propositions) expressed are distinct since the first can be false while the second is true. Although it is fairly clear that the author intended (2), a good writer avoids ambiguous constructions unless for some reason he intends them. So don't write sentences of the form

3) All Fs are not Gs 

if you intend say something of the form

4) Some Fs are not Gs.

Write instead sentences of the form

5) Not all Fs are Gs

which, by simple quantifier negation, is equivalent to (4). 

Class dismissed.

'Never-Trumper'

You are misusing 'never-trumper' if your usage does not comport with this conditional:

If you are a never-trumper, then you are a conservative, real or at least self-proclaimed.

Bill Kristol is a never-trumper; Hillary is not. 

Underlying  principle: do not engage in verbal inflation without a damned good reason. If a word or phrase has a specific meaning use it in that meaning.

A Note on Vox Clamantis in Deserto

This just over the transom from London Ed:

Pedantic, but I think you will secretly enjoy it.

Matt. 3:3 quoting Isaiah 40:3. The Vulgate has Vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini. [Right, I checked both quotations in my Biblia Vulgata.] There has always been a question about the parsing of this. Is it

A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”,

 as your quotation implies. Or is it

A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”.

Different translations differ. Of course the ancient Hebrew/Greek may be ambiguous, as they were not cursed with the quotation mark. I shall investigate further.

[Time passes]

OK I looked further. I always wondered if Matthew knew his scripture, but checking the Isa 40:3 in the Septuagint (the Jewish Alexandrian translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek), it is identical, i.e. Matthew’s Greek accurately reflects the Greek translation of Isaiah.

However, at least according to Pentiuc, the Septuagint Greek is a mis-translation of the Hebrew. 

According to the reading proposed by the Masoretes, this voice "cries" to the one called "to clear" the way in the wilderness (cf. Mal 3:1). Babylonian texts speak in similar terms of processional ways prepared for a god or a victorious king; this is the road by which Yahweh will lead his people through the desert in a new exodus. Quite contrary to this reading is the Septuagint's rendering, where the "voice is crying in the wilderness." This version indicates that the wilderness is the location of the mysterious voice, rather than the meeting place for God and his people returned from exile.

My emphasis. The Masoretes were the Jewish scribe-scholars who worked on the interpretation of the ancient texts.

BV: I am not competent to comment on the scholarly punctilios, , but I prefer the Septuagint reading for the (non)reason that I live in a desert. And I know Ed Abbey, the author of Vox Clamantis in Deserto, would agree for he too lived in the desert, in fact, in Oracle, Arizona, not far from here.

By the way, the preceding sentence is not good English by the lofty standards of MavPhil. Can you see why? Combox open.

On 'Devout'

One reads that so-and-so is a 'devout Catholic' or a 'devout Muslim.'

How would the writer know?  Devotion is an interior state inaccessible to observation from without. The practicing Catholic or observant Muslim, by contrast, can be seen to be such by others. So if what you mean to convey is that so-and-so is a practicing or observant Christian, Muslim, or Jew, then you should write that. It is obvious that the practitioner of a religion need not be particularly devout or devout at all.  And that includes priests, rabbis, and imams.

I grant that external practices are evidence of inner attitude. So, by the dictionary definition, you would not be wrong to call a regular practitioner of a religion 'devout.' But here at Maverick Philosopher our standards are a cut above those of a mere dictionary. We aim at precision in thought and speech. And sometimes we miss the mark.

So rather than bandy about, lemming-like, an oft-heard phrase, journalists should ask themselves whether the alternatives suggested above are more appropriate.

Language matters.

Speaking of dictionaries, The Dictionary Fallacy is a very good article in my biased opinion. It will cost you some effort, but a little hard work never hurt anybody.

Unbegriff

This passage from Schopenhauer illustrates one of my favorite German words, Unbegriff, for which we have no simple equivalent in standard English. 

"An impersonal God is no God at all, but only a word misused, an unconcept, a contradictio in adjecto, a philosophy professor's shibboleth, a word with which he tries to weasel his way after having had to give up the thing." (my trans.)

I read Schopenhauer as attacking those who want to have it both ways at once: they want to continue talking about God after having abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So they speak of an impersonal God, a construction in which the adjective 'contradicts' the noun. (The Ostrich of London may perhaps fruitfully reflect on the deliberate use-mention fudge in my last sentence.)

Language Rant: When to Capitalize the Initial Letter in 'Earth'

I found the following sentence in David Benatar's The Human Predicament, p. 36:

Nothing we do on earth has any effect beyond it. (36)

This sentence slipped past the Oxford editors. The initial letter of 'earth' ought to be capitalized since the word is being used as the proper name of a planet.  A while back, Cher threatened to leave for Jupiter, not jupiter, should Trump win the election.  Men are from Mars, not mars, and women from Venus, not venus. 

Mons veneris, however, is from the proper name of the goddess of love, not the planet. You know what it means and you know that it does not refer to an extraterrestrial  geological formation.

But if you are talking about dirt or soil or the mythical Aristotelian element, then write 'earth.' The lower case is also employed in such expressions as 'What on earth are you saying.'

The same goes for such expressions as 'She's not long for this earth.' When a person on Earth dies, his body does not leave Earth. But he leaves the world in one sense of 'world.' Sic transit gloria mundi.

Watch it, ragazzi, else I'll sic my cat Heinrich on you.   

Is Every Racist a White Supremacist?

'White supremacist' is becoming the Left's smear word of choice eclipsing even 'racist.' This leads to an interesting question: Is every racist a white supremacist?  That depends on what you think a racist is.

On one definition, a member of a race  is a racist if he harbors an irrational hatred of the members  of some other race  just in virtue of their membership in that other race. It follows that blacks who harbor an irrational hatred of whites just in virtue of their being white are racists.  But presumably few if any of them would count as white supremacists, on any reasonable definition of the latter. 

To answer the title question: it is not the case that every racist is a white supremacist; with few exceptions black racists are not white supremacists.

Now what I have just written has a tongue-in-cheek flavor. I am not seriously trying to straighten out any 'progressive' loon. For surely it would be absurd to invoke reason in the Left's lunatic asylum. It would be absurd to point out to a race-obsessed 'progressive' that 'racist' and 'white supremacist' have different meanings.

Race obsession is a cognitive aberration of leftist group-thinkers.  These sick people need therapy, not refutation or calm analysis.

Related articles

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Where Are All the White Supremacists?