Maverick Philosopher

'Broken' and Other Examples of First-Grade English

Stack topper.

Enlisting William S. Burroughs in the War Against Leftist Language-Abusers

I've been fulminating for over 20 years online against the language-abuse of  the language-abusing Left, having found it necessary on only a few occasions to take conservatives to task. Although my Beat credentials are impeccable,  I never took William Seward Burroughs seriously enough to suppose he could be enlisted on our side.  And then I stumbled upon this  article:

The modern left is unabashed about wielding language as a virus—or, really, as a form of control. “Supercut” videos by critics of corporate leftist media, like Tom Eliot, reveal the media figures and politicians repeating the same words and slogans over and over again: President Joe Biden, despite drooling on himself, is “sharp.” Kamala Harris has brought the “Joy, joy, joy” back into politics. Conservatives are “weird.” Abortion is “healthcare.” These word storms rip through the country via television, radio, and social media, infecting hosts from D.C. to California. Millions of people mindlessly repeat them as if they have been infected with some kind of mentally impairing disease. It’s a virus worse than COVID.

I agree with that completely. I am rather less enthusiastic about the following:

So how to fight the language virus? According to Burroughs, language can also be used to liberate. He believed that if words were cut into pieces and rearranged, you could break free from what he called the Control. Burroughs used rearranged texts, “found sound,” and tape-splicing—techniques still used by artists today—to defy the establishment. Burroughs used the method of cutting up sentences and rearranging them in famous countercultural books like Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine. 

My generation took a more direct approach to using language to dismantle Control: punk rock. Not for nothing was Burroughs known as “the Godfather of Punk.” The writer was lionized by people like Lou Reed, David Bowie, and bands like U2, Nirvana, Joy Division, Led Zeppelin, and Steely Dan. In his book American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Beat Generation, Jonah Raskin describes meeting Burroughs in San Francisco in the 1970s.

I will leave it for you to decide whether the way to combat the leftist language virus is via Old Bull Lee and punk rock.

Of the Beat triumvirate, "sweet gone Jack," alone moves me, supreme screw-up that he was, and surely no role model.  

One month to go, and then then it is October, Kerouac month in my literary liturgy. 

The Left's Verbal Theft

A Substack warning to foolish conservatives.

Michael Anton on "Celebration Parallax"

Here:

More tellingly, this charge is an example of something I call the “celebration parallax,” which is explained here. In brief, the celebration parallax holds that the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it and, crucially, the perceived intent of the speaker.

So if someone says that the U.S. is experiencing levels of immigration that are unprecedented in human history, if it’s presumed or suspected that he might have doubts, then he is an evil racist. But when Bill Clinton or Joe Biden makes exactly the same point, well, that is A-OK! Because they are “good guys” who welcome “an unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop” (Joe Biden’s words). By the way, I leave to readers to intuit the difference between “unrelenting” (Joe’s word) and “ceaseless” (my word) and the reasons why the former is A-OK but the latter is somehow “racist.”

Kamala as Zelig

Do you remember Zelig? If Zelig was the human chameleon, Kamala Harris is the political chameleon.

Official Trailer #1

Mia Farrow as Kamala

Who is Kamala Harris?  The Language Nazi cannot resist pointing our that the author of the linked piece confuses 'errant' with 'arrant' about five paragraphs down.

Past-Directed Gaslighting

An egregious example of present-directed gaslighting of the American people by the regime and the regime media is their dismissal of the numerous videos depicting Joe Biden's physical decrepitude as 'cheap/deep fakes.' 

What then are we to call the lie being currently spread by the regime and its shills that Kamala Harris was never the 'border czar'?  I call it past-directed gaslighting.  This form of gaslighting is promoted by 'scrubbing' the historical record, a tried-and-true totalitarian tactic. Totalitarians  want total control, and thus they want control over the past. They cannot erase the past, which is what it was, no matter what anyone says or writes. But they can bury the past in oblivion by altering the historical record.  The burial in oblivion, the destruction of collective memory, suffices for their nefarious purposes.

Now the meaning of Christopher Wray's ludicrous 'shrapnel speculation' falls into place.  Its purpose was to prepare the way for a future denial that the Trump assassination attempt ever happened. 

How do I know that? Well, I don't know that, but what I do know about these deep-staters makes my speculation reasonable. Or do you have a better explanation for Wray's remark?

The Bloodbath Canard

The corpulent Democrat Jerry Nadler repeated it today before the Christopher Wray congressional hearing. The context-dropping crapweasel knows full well what Trump meant, and if you don't, Snopes will clue you in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps I will explain myself tomorrow if  Typepad behaves itself.

........................

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signposts on the Way to the Insane Asylum

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

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

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

What is Fascism?

Are MAGA Republicans fascists?

Answer at the top o' the Stack.

'Progressive' and 'Conservative'

In their contemporary usages these terms are mainly misnomers.

If progress is change for the good, there is little progressive about contemporary 'progressives.' They are more accurately referred to as regressives. Or do you think that allowing biological males to compete in women's sporting events is a change for the good? It is obviously not, for reasons you will be able to discern without my help.  That is just one example among many.

As for so-called 'conservatives,' what do they ever succeed in conserving? These 'conservatives' are good at conserving only one thing: their own perquisites, privileges, pelf, and position. The things they are supposed to conserve they allow to be destroyed, among them,  the rule of law, our rights and liberties as enumerated in the Constitution, our national heritage as embodied in monuments and statues to great men, the very distinctions, principles, and values that underpin our republican form of government.  They will soon be gone forever,  and the Left will have won, if we the people don't push back pronto. 

But it may be too late for effective resistance, sunk as we Americans are in the warm bath of our own decadence.  We shall see.

Meanwhile, don't get too excited about all this. This world's a vanishing quantity and we with it.  The wise live for something that transcends it, but without dogmatism and doctrinal narrowness.

False Abstraction

Surely one of the idiocies of the age is the oft-repeated, "Diversity is our strength." Anyone who repeats this bit of thoughtless group-speak wears his folly like a scarlet letter.  I'll leave it to the reader to work out why the falsehood is false and how it  illustrates the fallacy of false abstraction. Why do I have to do all the work?

But a soupçon of  sanity is beginning to glimmer in the heads of  some of the original progenitors of  DEI nonsense.  See here.

Is Trump a Racist?

This morning at The New Yorker:

At this point, we know everything there is to know about Donald Trump. His diehard admirers—not all seventy-four million people who voted for him in the 2020 election but his immovable base, maybe thirty per cent of Republicans—admire him still, now more than ever. Is he a racist? Sure, by many definitions.

At this point I stopped reading.  I cannot think of one reasonable definition of 'racist' according to which Trump would count as a racist. Can you?  At least the journo* gives some evidence of understanding that the question whether so-an-so is an X depends on the definition of 'X.' 

__________

*'Journo' is my term of disapprobation for hack journalists a crapload of whom can be found among the 'woke.' 

Two Termites: Bergoglio and Biden

I sometimes refer to the current pope as Bergoglio the Termite to underscore the destructive effect he is having on a once-great institution. Early this morning it occurred to me that I might write a post comparing the various termites undermining our institutions. Of course 'President' Joe Biden immediately came to mind. Just now, an e-mail crossed the transom pointing me to an article in which William Kilpatrick, whom I have often approvingly quoted,  does part of the job for me, comparing the termitic attributes of Bergoglio and Biden. I recommend it for your perusal.

Needless to say, when I refer to Bergoglio as a termite, that is a figurative use of language: I am not suggesting that he is literally an insect or ought to be 'rubbed out' by chemical or other means.  People who cannot distinguish between the literal and the figurative show a lack of intelligence. Most recently, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others of his scrofulous ilk have shown this lack of intelligence when they failed to grasp  that Donald Trump's recent use of 'bloodbath' was figurative, not literal.* 

Joey B struggles with the distinction as well. Remember his  “The American people literally stood on the brink of a new Depression”?  That was around 2013 if memory serves. 

It is worth noting that not every term of abuse is purely abusive: 'termite' as applied to Jorge and Joseph (both of whose initials are 'J. B.') is not purely abusive in that it contains a factual core: both of these clowns are in fact working to destroy  their respective institutions.  Wittingly or unwittingly? I am inclined to say wittingly in the case of Bergoglio, unwittingly in the case of the demented Biden.  

There is of course a serious moral question connected to the use of abusive language meant to express contempt for fellow human beings.  But in a war against such anti-civilizational forces as we now face, different rules of engagement are permissible. Or so it seems. A hard nut to crack.

___________________

*You could of course respond to me that Scarborough and Co. understand the literal-figurative distinction and also understand that context is crucial in the interpretation of anyone's oral or written remark.  They probably do. But then it is even worse for them: they are trying to bamboozle the American people.  This is a moral defect, which is worse than a failure of understanding. Dripping with intellectual dishonesty and disregard for truth, these people warrant our contempt 

Trump's 'Bloodbath' Remark

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

Context matters!

No Person is Illegal!

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

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

1) No person is illegal.

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

Therefore

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

Therefore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Leftists Mean by 'Democracy'

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

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

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

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

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

Leftists Regularly Abuse Language

Example du jour: 'Gun Buy Back'

Top o' the Stack.

Is Trump a Threat to Democracy?

He most certainly is if 'democracy,' as per the woke Orwellian switcheroo -- to give it a name -- refers to plutocracy, rule by the wealthy. The plutocratic elites of the present time, unlike those of yesteryear,  are woke open-borders globalists with no commitment to their countries of origin. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are good examples. You will recall Hillary's endless mouthing of 'our democracy,' not that it has stopped. The superannuated and hyper-mendacious cow has been put out to pasture, thanks to DJT, but the attention-obsessed greed head won't stay there.

That the USA is a plutocracy is convincingly argued by Peter Turchin in End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration (Penguin, 2023). When Turchin, no conservative, tells us that the USA is a plutocracy, he means that ". . . at the top of the power pyramid in America is the corporate community: the owners and managers of large income-producing assets . . . ." (124-5) The economic elites rule America indirectly by dominating the political class by lobbying and the like. (125) "The two power networks, economic and administrative, are jointed at the hip" with the economic network in the dominant position. (125) "The corporate community also controls the ideological basis of power through the ownership  of mass media corporations . . . ." (125)

In nuce: Hillary is homo mendax, and not just her: we do not have a democracy, but a plutocracy, and Trump, billionaire that he is, is a threat to it in his role as populist.   

Is Leftism a Form of Mental Illness?

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

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

If January 6th was an Insurrection . . .

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

Two-Tiered System of Justice?

I know what conservatives such as Sean Hannity mean when they employ the above expression, but the expression is inept. There cannot be two tiers of justice, one for the rulers and the other for the ruled, or one for Democrats and the other for Republicans,  for the simple reason that justice in Anglo-American law is equal justice, one justice for all.  A guiding principle of our  republic, as the Pledge of Allegiance attests, is "liberty and justice for all." We are all (to be considered to be) equal before the law. Whether you are Joe Biden or Joe Blow, you are subject to the same laws. And the same goes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  It is a guiding ideal essential to our system of government. That it is being egregiously violated in the case of Trump does not make it any less of an ideal. 

Joe Sixpack will say, "This is all just semantics." That is the sort of response one expects from a barfly at Joe's Bar and Grill.  Someone who says that has not grasped the truth I have been hammering on for the last twenty years: Language Matters!

Julian Epstein, Democrat, on Crooked Joe. (HT: Tony Flood) There is hope for some Dems. 

No Labels? Label We Must!

"Not Right. Not Left. Forward." 

There are are real differences between Right and Left that cannot be ignored.  The positions must be carefully defined and appropriately labeled.  'No labels' is itself a label, an inept one.  Label we must.  We ought to do it carefully and thoughtfully.

The world is a plural world shot through with distinctions and differences and diversities. Aren't lefties big on 'diversity?' Diversity cannot be denied. But neither can unity.  Both are undeniable, both are valuable, and both, in their dialectical interplay, are world-constitutive. Since they go to a destructive and undialectical extreme that violates my syn- and pan-opticism I label lefties 'diversity mongers.'

May no peace be upon them.

Political Perception, Advocacy, and Reality

Hans Meyerson:

There are, I think, three chief obstacles that stand between Biden and re-election: the public’s perception of the economy, the public’s perception of immigration, and Biden’s own weaknesses as an advocate for his policies and his presidency. [Emphases added.]

This is the sort of garbage one expects from a delusional leftist who thinks that Trump poses an Hitlerian threat to 'democracy.'  Blind to their own reality denial, such people think that everything is a matter of perception, messaging, advocacy.  So it it is not Biden's disastrous policies that are the problem, but his failure to persuade the ovine masses to go along with them.

How stupid can these stupidi be?

On 'Over-Represent'

A big Stack attack on language abuse and wokeassery.

The importance of language and the injustice of 'equity.'

Political Parsimony

Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.

William of Ockham: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

William of Alhambra: Inimici non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Enemies are worse than friends are good. The enmity of the enemy is more to be feared than the friendship of the friend is to be desired. But show me a man with no enemies, and I'll show you a man with no character. We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable are distinguished by our enemies, in two senses of 'distinguish':  we are set apart from them and we are set above them.  A man is judged by the nature of his enemies — and by the nature of his friends.

"If I am a Transphobe, then you are a Misogynist!"

Thus I paraphrase Riley Gaines' brilliant response to the Congressional idiot who accused the swimmer of being 'transphobic.'

The denial of the most obvious distinctions by the 'woke' Left is part of the evidence for my claim made directly below that we are a nation losing its collective mind.

Addendum

What do I mean by 'collective mind?' I don't mean that there is one mind that is the mind of the nation. I mean that the climate of opinion has shifted such that a sizable majority of the populace lacks common sense and basic understanding of hitherto well-known facts.  You lack common sense, for example, if you think that tolerating criminal behavior will not lead to more criminal behavior.  You lack basic understanding of hitherto well-known facts if you think that the sex of a new-born can be assigned in the way that its name can be assigned. 

Allyship?

Explained here. Is this a parody?

Word found here:

“I started to see these intelligent, educated people, whose mission is to make our system better for people of color, suddenly posting all this anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stuff,” Rose said. “I’m not changing my values, but screw the allyship. I will not stop fighting, because I believe in the causes themselves. But as for going out of my way to support, to post, to give money? I’m done.”

Inconsistent even in their Misuse of Language

Leftists cannot even be consistent in their misuse of language. If the January 6th trespassers are insurrectionists, then so are the Hamas supporters who flooded the Cannon rotunda in the Capitol complex.  True, many were arrested. But will they be treated the same as the Jan-sixers? I wouldn't bet on it.

Rod Dreher Talks Sense

Here:

In America, when you hear media figures and politicians gassing on about “threats to democracy,” you should be aware that what they really might mean is “threats to a system that favors current elites and their prejudices, against the common good.” 

And this despite Dreher's to-me-incomprehensible  case of TDS.

Delete the might and Dreher's point is spot on.

No word or phrase is safe from an Orwellian language-hijacker, and leftists are language-hijackers, as I have been documenting online since 2004.

Diplomad 2.0 on the Biden 'Special' Counsel

We all know it's a joke, a joke worthy of that all-time jokester and comedian, Lavrenti Beria.

Beria would have appreciated AG Garland's "sudden" naming of a Special Counsel to look into Hunter Biden, this after years of saying no SC was needed. He also would have appreciated that the Special Counsel (SC) named is none other than US Attorney David Weiss (another miserable Trump appointment), who "investigated" Hunter for the past three three years: remember the laptop? On top of it, Beria would have appreciated how Garland has violated the law by picking Weiss; the law requires that the SC come from outside of the government, certainly not be a DOJ Attorney and the one, on top of it all, who has protected the Biden Crime Family (BCF) for these past three years. Let us not forget that Weiss masterminded that other joke: the "plea deal" for Hunter which would have allowed that crackhead to skate on serious tax fraud and gun charges that would have put any of us in the slammer for years.

Well, of course, it turned out some honest judge threw out the plea deal as it contained promises of, in essence, permanent immunity for Hunter from any other prosecutions. 

Read it all.  Garland & Co. see themselves and their 'president' as above the law while piously intoning, "No man is above the law, not even the president of the United States."  

A Short History of Slavery

Candace Owens, about five and a half minutes.  A crisp refutation of widespread leftist lies and omissions. Do your bit and propagate this video.

"Truth is not a leftist value." (Dennis Prager) Some of you think that I came up with the line. Not so. I got it from Prager. Always give credit where credit is due. Or are you a plagiarist like Joe Biden?

His plagiarism is a comparatively minor element given the depth of his moral corruption, as is becoming increasingly evident. The case against Biden 2024 is massive even if you don't agree with me that the hard-Left/'woke' policies this puppet promotes are destructive unto national suicide.

Political views aside, anyone can see that Biden is physically unfit for office and non compos mentis, not of sound mind. These two absolutely undeniable points disqualify him, especially as commander-in-chief. (Our geopolitical adversaries are licking their chops and testing the old fool with blatant provocations in preparation for events that few want to talk about.) Biden's supporters will deny his moral corruption; their denial, however, only serves to make evident their moral corruption and disregard for facts.

Democracy with State-Sponsored Election Interference?

I should think they are incompatible. Might a bit of Orwellian re-definition help?

Maybe it is like this. Just as the border is secure as DHS-head Alejandro Mayorkas defines 'secure,' state-sponsored election interference is compatible with democracy as the regime and its media shills define 'democracy.'

Our political enemies from the Big Guy on down are not just brazen and repeated liars, they are something worse: subverters of language.

I hand off to Alan Dershowitz, the best legal mind in the country, and  a Democrat.

'Post-Truth'

A buzz word much bandied about in 2016, usually in connection with Donald J. Trump.

Top o' the Stack.

You will learn something from this piece if you have an attention span. Too much twit-shit and your span may shrink to a point. You may transmogrify into a tweeting twit whose brain is fit only to flit.

Toleration Misunderstood

"Toleration" is not a dirty word, contrary to what a growing number who misuse the term, seem to think. Now leftists are the kings of language-abuse, but conservatives are not immune to it either.  The current trend toward the misuse of 'toleration' needs to be vigorously opposed as I do in this latest Substack article.

Conservative or Counter-Revolutionary?

Christopher Rufo made an excellent contribution to Mark Levin's "Life, Liberty, and Levin" last night. I will put one of his points in my own way with my own additions and 'flourishes.'

One can conserve only what one has, not what one has lost. We conservatives have lost control of our institutions including the universities, the schools, the churches, and the Fourth Estate. The Left's "long march through the institutions" has been successful thanks to their energy and our inattention. Since there is little or nothing left to conserve, we must take back what has been stolen. While we may continue to call ourselves conservatives, we must think of ourselves as counter-revolutionaries.  Counter-revolutionaries, not reactionaries. 'Reactionary Right' is a phrase to avoid. He who reacts is defined by that against which he reacts. We need action, not reaction. 

As for the 'post-liberals,' it is not clear what they are about.  But to the extent that they support a 'throne and altar' response to the Left's depredations, in the form, say, of integralism, then they are but another impotent form of reaction.

Should We Discuss Our Differences?

Pessimism versus optimism about disagreement.

Substack latest.

'2A' a Terrorist Marker?

It emerged in the Congressional FBI whistleblower hearings that the abbreviation '2A' is a "terrorist marker." That came as news to me. (But see here.) I have been using '2A' from time to time as an innocuous abbreviation of 'Second Amendment.'  The context, of course, is the Bill of Rights which are the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

I have written sentences like this:

2A does not confer, but protects, the citizen's right to keep and bear arms.

My use of the harmless abbreviation makes me a terrorist, a white supremacist, and what all else in the eyes of the regime.  What does it make the regime? A police state.

So I suppose it is a good thing that it has been a very long time since I attended a Latin mass. These masses, as is now well-known, are notorious gathering points for insurrectionists, militiamen, and other violent extremists out to overthrow 'democracy.'  Much less known, however, is that these masses are conducted, not in old Church Latin, but in coded Latin.  Thus hoc est corpus meum is code for create mayhem. De mortuis resurrexit means: he rose up and committed insurrection.  There really are very few threats to the powers that be stronger and more insidious than the Latin mass, which is why Pope Francis, that faithful custodian of the depositum fidei, is such a staunch defender of the old mass against the forces of reform.

Sarcasm aside, part of understanding  the destructive Left is understanding their commitment to the hermeneutics of suspicion.  You can learn about said hermeneutics, and cognate topics, from my essay From Democrat to Dissident section 16.4. It is published in Hillman and Borland, eds., Dissident Philosophers: Voices Against the Political Current of the Academy, Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.  Available via Amazon where you can read some editorial reviews.

 

Climate 'Theology'

Tucker Carlson has a bad habit of referring to climate alarmism as climate 'theology.'  I know what he is trying to say, but it is unseemly for a conservative to misuse a perfectly good word and denigrate that to which it refers. Natural theology, which is a branch of philosophy, is a legitimate inquiry, as is theology proper, which is not a branch of philosophy. A second example:

In the left-wing rag of record, the NYT, we find:

“When you buy gold you’re saying nothing is going to work and everything is going to stay ridiculous,” said Mackin Pulsifer, vice chairman and chief investment officer of Fiduciary Trust International in New York. “There is a fair cohort who believes this in a theological sense, but I believe it’s unreasonable given the history of the United States.”

So to believe something 'in a theological sense' is to believe it unreasonably.  It follows that liberals have plenty of 'theological' beliefs.  In the 'theology' of a liberal, theology can be dismissed unread as irrational.

And then there is the misuse of 'metaphysics.' I'll save that rant for later.

The wider pattern is the secularization of religious language.

Take ‘retreat.’ Time was, when one went on a retreat to get away from the world to re-collect oneself, to meditate on the state of one's soul and on first and last things. But now one retreats from the world to become even more worldly, to gear up for greater exertions in the realms of business or academe. One retreats from ordinary busy-ness to prepare for even greater busy- ness. 

Another perfectly good word has been destroyed. 

As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative, don't talk like a damned 'liberal.' Why the sneer quotes? Because there is nothing classically liberal about contemporary liberals who are ever on the slouch toward leftism, and its most noxious variant, 'wokery.' 

Realize that we are in a war, and in a war one does not give ammo to the enemy. Do not validate, by employing, the Left's obfuscatory terminology. Never use 'woke' without sneer quotes. Never use words like 'homophobic' or 'transphobic.' Never use 'Islamophobia' as I once caught the great Victor Davis Hanson doing. A phobia is an irrational fear, and there is nothing irrational about fear of radical Islam. 

Language matters. Some battles are won and lost on linguistic ground. Leftists understand this. They understand that he who controls the language controls the debate. This explains the Left's unremitting  Orwellian abuse of language and their asinine question-begging and question-burying neologisms.

DIE: 'Equity' Can Get You Killed

Here:

America’s top medical schools, worried [that] they have too few minority students, are doing something about it. They are lowering academic standards for admission and trying to hide the evidence. Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Mount Sinai, and the University of Pennsylvania have already done so. The list already tops forty, and more are sure to follow.

A 'progressive' would call that progress. I suggest that you never use 'equity' or 'progressive' without the sneer quotes. 

Question for the syntactically punctilious: In the sentence immediately preceding, are the inverted commas being used to mention, to sneer, or both?

'Equity' is an obfuscatory woke-left coinage the purpose of which is to elide the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.  The tactic is to promote the confusion of equality of opportunity -- which everyone is for -- with equality of outcome. The latter would be good if it naturally came about. Unfortunately, the various hierarchies of life make that impossible without massive governmental interference.  For it is a plain fact that individuals and groups are not equal by any empirical measure. (People are loathe to admit this because the admission sounds 'racist,' 'sexist,' 'ageist,' 'ableist,' etc., and being fearful, they fear being tagged with these pejoratives. But in a contest between a smear word and Reality, the latter wins in the end.) 

The achievement of equality of outcome requires equalizing agencies with vast power centered in a Sino-styled Sicherheitsstaat, a security or police state with social credit scores and omni-intrusive surveillance. But note that even then you would not have 'equity,' i.e., equality of outcome, because the equalizers would not be equal in power, position, pelf, and perquisites to the equalized. Would-be socializers, equalizers, and top-down planners typically imagine themselves ending up among the socializers, equalizers, and planners and not among the socialized, equalized, and planned.  More importantly, history shows that outcome-equalization from the top down leads to inanition as in the good old USSR the menus of whose restaurants listed many a dish only one of which was available: borscht. Yum!

Leftists are semantic smugglers. They are trying in this instance and in others to pass off something destructive under cover of something appealing.  Equality of opportunity, equality of political rights, equality before the law, etc. appeal to almost all of us. So what the stealth-ideological leftist does is to use this attractive wrapping to smuggle into uncritical heads the pseud0-value, or disvalue, 'equity,' understood as governmentally enforced equality of outcome or result.

Now my dear friends: if we we don't punch back hard against this destructive nonsense we are 'screwed,' all of us, even the wokesters themselves, and their usefully-idiotic fellow travellers, though their evil and cooperation with evil disallows their cognizance of the fact.  

If you haven't had enough of this delightful topic, here is an exchange between Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders in which B. S. demonstrates what a clueless and/or mendacious specimen he is.

Left, Right, Sex, and Gender

Top o' the Stack.

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

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

The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.

Conservatives are long on talk, but short on conservation.

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

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

resist, Resist, RESIST!

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

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

Of 'Blind Review' and Pandora's Box

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

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

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

Synchronicity City!

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

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

 

Will respond to your other points and queries later.

Fetterman Unfettered: Against Ableism

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

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

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

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

What is Fascism? Are MAGA Republicans Fascists?

The Left's favorite 'F' word is of course 'fascist.' But of course they don't define it, the better to use it as a verbal cudgel.  But we know that responsible discussion of a topic begins with a definition of terms.

What is a fascist? More to the point, what is fascism? The term expresses what philosophers call a 'thick' concept. Such concepts combine evaluative and descriptive content.  Examples include cruel and cowardly. If I describe an action as cowardly, I am both describing it and expressing a negative moral evaluation of it. Right and wrong, by contrast, are 'thin' concepts inasmuch as they contain no descriptive content.  If I commend you for doing the right thing, my commendation includes no descriptive content. Fascist is clearly thick. If we are called fascists, or 'semi-fascists' in the parlance of our illustrious president Joe Biden, at least some slight descriptive content is implied, even if the lion's share of the semantic load is expressive, not of sober moral judgment, but of blind hatred and contempt.  I now unpack the descriptive content of fascist and fascism, and then go on to argue that no Republican, MAGA or not, can be fairly accused of being a fascist.

Main marks of fascism

According to Anthony Quinton,

It [Fascism] combines an intense nationalism, which is both militarily aggressive and resolved to subdue all aspects of public and private life to the pursuit of national greatness. It asserts that a supreme leader is indispensable, a heroic figure in whom the national spirit is incarnated. It seeks to organize society along military lines, conceiving war as the fullest expression of the national will as brought to consciousness in the leader. It sees the nation not primarily as a cultural entity, defined by a common language, traditional customs, perhaps a shared religion, a history of heroes and great events, but also in questionably biological terms. (Anthony Quinton, "Conservatism," in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, eds. Goodin and Pettit, Blackwell, 1995, p. 264.)

Quinton tells us that there are anticipations of fascism in Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, and that its main exponents are Mussolini and Hitler. Fascism is further described as "aggressive," "militant," and "totalitarian without qualification." The masses are to have no say in their governance; they are to obey. There are no rules for the orderly transfer of power. "Leaders are presumably to emerge as victors in the struggle for power within the ruling party." (264) Quinton also mentions the 'organicism' of fascism whereby it appeals to those "ready to submerge their individuality" in the national life and to find thereby their whole raison d'etre in "the service of the state," in the way that the function of a particular organ is to contribute to the well-being of the body of which it is a part." (264-265)

Are MAGA Republicans fascists?

I can be brief. Of course they are not.

Start with nationalism. Trump's is an enlightened nationalism and it is certainly not "militarily aggressive." America First does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.

And of course enlightened nationalism has nothing to do with white nationalism. We must resist this race-baiting leftist smear.  There is no 'biologism' in Trump's nationalism.

Is Trump at the center of a 'cult of personality'? No more than Obama was. Trump supporters are drawn to the ideas he espouses, which are all classically American; they are in fact most of them critical of the man himself. 

To understand how destructive the Left is, you must understand that they feel no compunction at the Orwellian subversion of language, the brazen telling of lies, and psychological projection: what they accuse us of doing is almost always what they themselves are doing. They project in order to deflect attention from their own malfeasance and dereliction of duty.

Once again, TRUTH IS NOT A LEFTIST VALUE. Part of their trick is to say something so manifestly in conflict with reality that people will think: no one would have the chutzpah to say that unless it were true. That is the psychology of the big lie. And notice the smile. This is part of the psychological ploy. You look into the camera as Joey B did during one of the debates with Trump and you smile -- and the pearl-clutching old ladies (of all ages and sexes) melt, and think, "He's such a nice man!"

Questions about Pronouns, Sex, and 'Wokism'

Elliot Crozat writes, 

During my visit, one of our conversation topics was pronoun usage. If I recall, on one of the hikes, you gave the example "He who hesitates is lost” and asked about the function of ‘He.’ You then said that this pronoun seems to function as a universal quantifier such that, for any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost. I agree. Our agreement suggests that pronouns can function logically in ways that differ from their merely grammatical appearance.

BV: Right. Although 'he' and 'she' are classified grammatically as pronouns, their logical function in examples like the one I gave is not pronominal, but quantificational. Pronouns typically have noun antecedents, but 'he' in 'He who hesitates is lost' has no antecedent. It functions like a bound variable. I can imagine a Yogi Berra type joke. I say to Berra, "He who hesitates is lost," and he replies, "You mean Joe Biden?" (Here is a real Yogi Berra joke. Someone asked Berra what time it is. He replied, "You mean now?")

I spoke today with a friend, a philosopher, who is under some pressure from his employer to use the ‘preferred pronouns’ of colleagues and others even if such 'pronouns' don't align with the biological sex of the 'preferrers.' For various reasons concerning clarity and accuracy of language, freedom of speech and thought, and ideological disagreement, my friend is concerned about how to navigate this progressivist current in a responsible manner. We discussed some ideas.

Here’s one. Suppose a biological male, Mark, desires and requests to be referred to as ‘she.’ Suppose also that, generally speaking, all pronouns that are indexicals (i.e., demonstratives) refer to their respective persons or objects as they objectively are. Smith, a colleague of Mark, attempts to refer to Mark as ‘she.’ It would seem, then, that ‘she’ fails to refer – or that Mark fails to refer via ‘she’ – and thus ‘she’ is a useless and confusing bit of language. Smith’s use of ‘she’ is unhelpful on this account.

BV: I will first make the minor point that an indexical is not the same as a demonstrative. Every demonstrative is an indexical, but not conversely. Suppose I am standing before the deli counter. Having temporarily forgotten that the name of what I want is 'prosciutto,' I say to the deli man, "I'd like some of that." My use of the demonstrative 'that' must be accompanied by a demonstration if I am to succeed in conveying my request. I have to point to the meat I want. But I don't have to point to myself when I utter the indexical 'I' in 'I'd like some of that." 'I' is not a demonstrative. 

A second minor point is that 'I' sometimes functions as a bound variable.  Suppose that in explaining intentionality to a student, I say, "I cannot think without thinking of something." I have not made an autobiographical remark. The proposition I am attempting to convey to the student is that, for any person x, if x thinks, then x thinks of something. 

Grammatical pronouns can function pronominally, indexically, and quantificationally.  Here is a sentence featuring a pronoun functioning pronominally and which therefore has  an antecedent:

Peter always calls before he visits.

In this sentence, 'Peter' is the antecedent of the third-person singular pronoun 'he.'  It is worth noting that an antecedent needn't come before the term for which it is the antecedent:

After he got home, Peter poured himself a drink.

In this sentence 'Peter' is the antecedent of 'he' despite occurring after 'he' in the order of reading.  The antecedency is therefore referential rather than temporal.  In both of these cases, the reference of 'he' is supplied by the antecedent.  The burden of reference is borne by the antecedent.  So there is a clear sense in which the reference of 'he' in both cases is not direct, but mediated by the antecedent. (And if the reference of the antecedent is mediated by a Frege-style sense or Sinn, then we have a double mediation.)  The antecedent is referentially prior to the pronoun for which it is the antecedent.  But suppose I point to Peter and say

He smokes cigarettes.

This is an indexical use of 'he.'  Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the non-linguistic context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction.  The sentence need not be situated in a linguistic context.  Another part of what makes 'he' in the example an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun that fixes the reference to Peter and nothing else, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference.  Now suppose I say

I smoke cigars.

This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is  purely indexical (David Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration:  I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.'  And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.'  Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.

In fact, it seems that no expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent.  Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:

Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)

 For a quantificational use of a grammatical pronoun, consider

He who hesitates is lost.

Clearly, 'he' does not function here pronominally -- there is no antecedent -- nor does it function indexically.  It functions like the bound variable in

For any person x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.

But is this token ‘she’ a pronoun in appearance only? It seems to function in some ways like a proper name (perhaps a sobriquet or a tag of sorts) of one who has undergone a name change. On this view, the token ‘she’ wouldn’t function as a rigid designator, since there are possible worlds in which Mark doesn’t use ‘she.’ But the token seems to work as a name or tag for Mark in relevant circumstances.

BV: I would say that 'she' has a sense which requires that any human being  successfully referred to by its use is a biological female. I am inclined to say that if you try to refer to a biological male as 'she,' then the reference won't be successful. But this is none too clear.  

Consider the example of Cassius Clay, who underwent a change in the way he viewed himself and hence selected a new name to reflect his subjective change of ‘self-identification.’ As a matter of respect for Clay as a person, others began to call him by his new name ‘Ali.’

Is the Clay-Ali scenario relevantly similar to the situation of Mark, who in this world subjectively identifies as female despite being biologically male and having formerly identified as male? Suppose Smith speaks about Mark by saying “She went to the market.” Does Smith refer successfully to Mark in virtue of using “she” as something like a proper name rather than a pronoun?

BV: One can change one's religion but one cannot change one's sex. That's an important difference. I myself find it very easy to identify with women, but surely it is impossible for me to identify as a woman if that means:  apperceive or interpret myself or alter my physicality or raiment in such a way as to bring it about that I become a woman. I can no more identify as a woman than I can identify as a cat or a carrot. Of course, I can pretend to be a woman and even successfully pass myself off as one.  (Cf. the movies "Tootsie" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" which you no doubt have seen.) But a man in drag remains a man, even if he is in what I call  'super-drag' where this includes surgical mutilation and augmentation of the body, hormone replacement 'therapy,' etc.  And the sexual frisson/excitation that a man might feel when putting on panties and bra is male frisson is it not? And thus further proof that he remains a man even if he has had his genitalia lopped off and a vagina fashioned from his former penis? 

I am inclined to say that a literal sex change operation is an impossibility. No animal can change its sex or have its sex changed.

Here is a proof from the metaphysics of time. Tell me what you think of it. Every adult woman was a girl. Every adult male was a boy.  The past is unalterable. (Not even God  can restore a virgin.) Now it is possible for a man to become a woman only if it is possible for a man to have been a girl. But that is impossible because it is impossible to alter the past.  Therefore, it is impossible for a man to become a woman no matter how he is altered, even chromosomally. The nature of time rules it out.

Here is another thought. You can change your religion or your political affiliation, but not your race or your sex.  These non-negotiable facts are extra-linguistic. Now with the exception of mere Millian tags, the senses of words determines their reference and not the other way around. I suggested above that one cannot successfully refer to a biological male using 'she.' And this for the reason that 'she' has a sense that is sexually restrictive, assuming that it is being used to refer to sexually-polarized animals such as human beings as opposed to ships and flags as in "She's a grand old flag; she's a high-flying flag . . . ." So is the extra-linguistic fact I mentioned partially determining the sense of 'she'? That's what I am puzzling over at the moment. But I am just 'shootin' from the hip here and perhaps what I have written is not sufficiently clear to permit evaluation.  

If the proper name account doesn’t succeed, perhaps ‘she’ has a non-indexical use. Some pronouns have non-indexical applications. David Braun lists three types of pronoun use: indexical(demonstrative), bound variable, andunbound anaphoric. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/#IndNonIndUsePro

Perhaps ‘she’ has a bound variable use, such as: “Every male who subjectively identifies as a female believes she will be better off doing so.” Or maybe ‘she’ has an unbound anaphoric use, such as: “Mark was late to work today. She was caught in traffic.”

These non-indexical accounts seem strained to me, and hence I’m thinking the proper name account might be better. Or maybe there is still another account that best explains what is happening in these linguistically-odd situations. Maybe all efforts to refer to Mark as 'she' fail to refer.

I’d like to hear what you have to say on this issue, since you’ve thought deeply about pronouns and about the philosophy of language. I’d be glad to give you a call this weekend to chat, if you're free. Or we can discuss via email. 

BV: I have time for one more comment. 'Mark was late for work because she was caught in traffic.' If I heard that I would ask, "Who was the female in question and what did her getting caught in traffic have to do with Mark's being late for work?"

Your philosopher friend should politely tell his employer that his preferred pronouns are those of standard English and that, while he is willing to tolerate the linguistic innovations of others, he expects toleration in return. If his tolerance is met with intolerance, then he should politely remind the intolerant about who has the guns.

Is 'Monkey Pox' Racist?

Substack latest.

Short, sweet, and lethal. Match grade argumentative ammo for your encounters with your leftist pals.

Why are Women 'Over-Represented' among Realtors?

Here is my Substack answer to the title question together with a healthy serving of conceptual analysis as part of  my ongoing quest to disembarrass sad wokeheads and Dementocrats of their fatuities, fallacies, and overall intellectual feculence. ('Feculence' as you may know is from feces.)  I am being polite. I am showing some 'class.' 

But here is something very important for you to know.

In the political sphere, and not just there, the ability to kick ass is far more important than class. The first value clearly trumps the second. It is a mark of a RINO not to understand this.

So I predict that, even if the Republicans gain control of both the House and the Senate come November, they will not deploy their majorities in an effective way against their political enemies. Little will get done to reverse the assault on the Republic. And that is because they, as a group and because of the large number of RINOs, do not have the civil courage to punch back in the manner in which they are punched at. 

Trump tried to teach them how to fight, but they ignored his clear message, or, more likely, they simply lack the civil courage to implement it.  Of the four cardinal virtues, courage is the most difficult to display. For it, unlike the other three, exacts a high cost.  I myself lack the courage, not to mention the social skills, to enter the political arena. I'm Italian, a lover not a fighter -- until pushed to the wall.

In any case, no true philosopher could consider the political the locus of ultimate reality.

The Orwellian Abuse of Approbatives: 'Democracy'

An approbative word or phrase is one the conventional use of which indicates an approving or appreciative attitude on the part of the speaker or writer.  The opposite is a pejorative.  'Democracy' and 'racism' as currently used  in the USA and elsewhere in the Anglosphere are examples of the former and the latter respectively. If we distinguish connotation from denotation, we can say that approbatives have an axiologically positive, and pejoratives an axiologically negative, connotation. 

Approbatives are like honorifics, except that the latter term is standardly used in reference to persons.

You will have noticed by now that the hard Left, which has come to dominate the once-respectable Democrat Party, has become infinitely abusive of the English language as part of their overall strategy of undermining what it has taken centuries to build. They understand that the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.

And so these termitic Orwellians take the word 'democracy,' and while retaining its approbative connotation, (mis)use it to denote the opposite of its conventional referent. They use it to mean the opposite of what it standardly or conventionally means.  What they mean by it is either oligarchy or in the vicinity thereof. Hillary Clinton, for example, regularly goes on about "our democracy." But of course, in violation of the Inclusion plank in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion  (DEI) platform, "our democracy" does not include what Hillary calls "deplorables" or what Barack Obama calls "clingers." Whom does it include? Well, her and her globalist pals.

A clever piece of linguistic chicanery. Take a word or phrase with a positive connotation and then apply the Orwellian inversion algorithm. Use 'democracy' in such a way that it excludes the people.

Crossposted at Substack.

Hey Wokester!

You won't teach your students grammar, but you will 'teach' them the 'right' pronouns?

..................................

J. E. comments:

Having fled to a tavern following the presentation at an academic conference of a paper on modal verbs, I found your recent remark about the woke approach to grammar and language indicative of my broad experience as an English teacher. I would point out only one thing: when you say the wokester won't teach his/her/xe students grammar, a reader might presume you are attributing to the wokester the ability to teach grammar but the willful refusal to do so. Not so. Most that I have encountered could not distinguish a participle from a particle, though whether cause or consequence of their enwokened state I can never tell. Thanks for your time in reading this missive.

And thank you for your well-written response.  I fear that you are right. But at least the wokester knows what a pronoun is. What hasn't dawned on him, however, is that his exiguous knowledge of grammar makes him partially racist since we all now know that grammar is racist and for the same reason that mathematics is.

I will add that grammar is propadeutic to logic, or, as I heard a German say, Grammatik ist logische Vorschule. But we all now know how utterly racist logic is, precisely because of its having been secreted by the brains of  dead old white racists.  Please forgive the pleonastic expression, 'white racist.' 

And if my employment of a German sentence isn't racist enough, here is a racist gloss on the foregoing:

"Propaedeutic" is from Greek paideuein, meaning "to teach," plus "pro-," which means "before." "Paideia" and "paideuein" both spring from the root "paid-," which means "child."

But you don't know that word, do you? You probably attended 'schools' run by leftists. Would it be an exaggeration to say that leftists specialize in the erasure of history and the erosion of standards? How much of an exaggeration?