I will once again post a story about Sarahpalin without discussing Sarapalin:
“I liked what he said,” Palin told us in a phone interview. “I talked too in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times.” For Palin, that view strikes close to home: Her eldest son, 20-year-old Track, is an Army infantry member who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.
Track is “an Army infantry member”? That’s sounds strange to my ears. Can’t we say infantryman? I understand the urge to avoid “man” language, but that urge is misplaced when it reaches a situation like this, where all “members” of the infantry are in fact men.
Apollo posted this at 8:38 PM EST on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 as Politics and the English Language
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The most meaningless and misleading euphemism in English-speaking politics – and that’s a difficult list to top – is how abortion advocates have turned “choice” into a synonym for abortion.
Read this story. And count how many choices that this woman made that led up to her abortions. Opposing abortion has nothing to do with opposing “choice,” no more than opposing theft or vandalism or slavery involves opposing “choice.” That is, surely all things we ban restrict “choice” in some way, but the relevant question is whether that is a choice we believe should be closed off to our fellow citizens. Monopolizing the word “choice” for the pro-abortion cause is perhaps the single most audacious maneuver in the lengthy American history of twisting language for political purposes. What’s galling – utterly galling – is how the entire media goes along with it.
Apollo posted this at 8:03 PM EDT on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 as Journalism, Kulturkampf, Politics and the English Language
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It is not “terrorism” to attack a military base manned and guarded by active duty military personnel. And when people on American soil try to kill American soldiers as part of a large-scale global war, “murder” is not the correct word.
In numerous ways, that cut for both major ideologies, it makes things simpler to use these words. But that doesn’t make it accurate, and it doesn’t change the underlying realities of war.
Apollo posted this at 8:05 PM EDT on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 as Politics and the English Language
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LyfLines nicely juxtaposes 3 quotations (H/T):
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
- George Orwell
Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.
- John Derbyshire
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.
- Thomas Friedman
To this, let’s add Abraham Lincoln: “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” Thomas Friedman, get thee to a laogai.
Hubbard posted this at 4:39 PM EDT on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 as Commie Recrudescence, Politics and the English Language
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Ann Althouse has a fantastic post on how to attack and defend proposed legislation, and why Sarah Palin’s “death panels” shtick was perfectly in bounds:
When a big bill is dumped on us, we are challenged to read and understand the text. Usually we don’t, but the text is there, and there’s nothing scurrilous about trying to read it, calling attention to worrisome language, and putting our arguments in vivid words. A candidate, on the other hand, is not a text to be read, but there are facts about him that we may want to know. If someone asserts a fact about a candidate and says, for example, that Obama is a Muslim or Obama was born in Kenya, then the candidate, if he doesn’t choose to ignore the assertion or simply make his own flat assertion of denial, is forced to come up with some evidence, which may be difficult and may lead to a new phase of the controversy in which the evidence is challenged.
This is completely different from a controversy about a written text that people are trying to read. If the text doesn’t mean what its opponents are saying, it should be easy for the authors of the text to show how it means something good or to amend the text and make its goodness obvious. The authors of the text should trounce their opponents. If they can’t, we should fear and mistrust them.
That’s how things work in a boisterous democracy like ours, and long may it be so.
Prof. Althouse concludes by looking at the situation now that sentors have announced the end-of-life “counseling” provision is being pulled: “[W]hy didn’t Democrats argue their side? Why did they back down? I suspect it’s because they really did hope to save money by substituting painkillers for curative treatments for the old and disabled.”
I think it’s difficult to listen to all the talk of “curve-bending,” to hear Obama wax philosophic about the waste involved in replacing his granny’s hip, to see the end-of-life “counseling” language in a bill that’s supposedly designed to cut healthcare costs, and then conclude that Althouse is wrong. Whatever they said publicly, and whatever outs they may have tried to leave themselves in the bill, those who drafted it were looking to save money by not providing treatment to people who are supposedly near the end of their lives.
Apollo posted this at 12:20 PM EDT on Friday, August 14th, 2009 as Health Care, Politics, Politics and the English Language
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Everyone’s favorite high-profile victim is sounding the outrage alert again, this time over a doctored picture which photoshops a conservative talk radio host’s face onto baby Trig. It’s not much to tear your hair out over, but wingnuts are over-reacting to a degree that would be surprising if we weren’t talking about wingnuts. The real winner, though, is the Palin camp’s press release (emphasis added):
“Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother’s love for a special needs child,” Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapelton said in a statement provided to CNN.
Here’s the undoctored original:
Geoff posted this at 6:20 PM EDT on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 as Kulturkampf, Politics and the English Language
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Is when leftists are referred to as “moderate” or “not radical” because they advocate change from within the system rather than changing the entire system.
If a right-winger wanted to abolish a cabinet department, I don’t think many people would have problems calling that person a radical. And certainly we neo-cons have been called radicals quite a bit over the last few years. In neither of these cases would I want to work “outside” the system.
But if a leftist wants government to dictate how much each person is paid, and wants the government to require that businesses discriminate racially in order to achieve balance, and wants to take money from taxpayers and fund abortions at all stages of pregnancy both here in America and throughout the developing world – well that person’s really just a moderate because she wants to do it through the system rather than using violence to overthrow the government.
So long as she dramatically changes the nature of American life by working through the system, she’s a moderate. What a great standard to be held to.
Apollo posted this at 10:01 PM EDT on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 as Politics and the English Language
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This list of people banned from the UK for their extremist views is up on Drudge. I guess if you’ve got your own country and you want to keep Michael Savage and Fred Phelps out, that’s your prerogative. It just seems like more trouble than its worth in their cases.
What’s interesting are the people about whom this list reveals precious little information. Putting out a list of people banned from your country seems like a worthwhile occasion for specifying what, exactly, is so unacceptable about their behavior. While it’s fairly detailed about the reasons for banning people with Anglo or European style names, the reasons for banning people with more interesting names is more opaque.
AMIR SIDDIQUE
Preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fomenting terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs.
WADGY ABD EL HAMIED MOHAMED GHONEIM
A prolific speaker and writer. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glory terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to commit terrorist acts.
ABDULLAH QADRI AL AHDAL
Preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence.
YUNIS AL ASTAL
Preacher and Hamas MP. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to terrorist acts.
SAFWAT HIJAZI
Television preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by glorifying terrorist violence.
Preachers, you say. What church has such “particular beliefs”? Are they Methodists?
Apollo posted this at 8:19 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 as Faith, Politics and the English Language, Running with the antelope
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Jeez this story is full of crap:
The service law expands ways for students and seniors to earn money for college through their volunteer work.
If there’s one thing I know about volunteer work, it’s that you don’t get paid for it.
It aims to foster and fulfill people’s desire to make a difference, such as by mentoring children, cleaning up parks or buildings and weatherizing homes for the poor.
No, it aims to pay people to mentor children, clean up parks or buildings and weatherize homes for the poor. Whether differences are made or desires fulfilled is beside the point. We know this is true because if there is no money paid out to “voluteers,” the program will be considered a failure; so long as it is paying out money to “volunteers,” though, it will be a success, even if no person’s desire to make a difference is fostered.
Bolstering voluntary public service programs has been a priority of Obama, who credits his work as a community organizer in his early 20s for giving him direction in life. The president cited his work in Chicago as an example of how one person can make a difference.
“All that’s required on your part is a willingness to make a difference,” Obama said. “That’s the beauty of it; everybody can do it.”
Oh good grief! I remember back in the campaign when people were looking at young Barry’s days as a “community organizer” (he was paid; it wasn’t volunteer work either), no one could show an example of him “making a difference.” The only person who seems to have concretely benefited from that time period is him. “Making a difference” – to the extent that phrase has any meaning at all – is not about willingness, it’s about resources and competence. Neither of which did our president have during his “community organizing” days.
AmeriCorps offers a range of volunteer opportunities including housing construction, youth outreach, disaster response and caring for the elderly. Most receive an annual stipend of slightly less than $12,000 for working 10 months to a year.
Not a lot of money; also, though, not volunteer work.
Alan Solomont, who chairs AmeriCorps’ board, said former President John F. Kennedy’s call to service inspired more people to help others than just those who joined the Peace Corps. He said this national service legislation could produce the same effect.
“It is not unlike the moment in 1960 when President Kennedy asked Americans, you know, to serve, but it is certainly going to engage millions more today,” Solomont said in a conference call arranged by the White House.
First, Dwight Eisenhower was president in 1960. Second, Peace Corps maxed out in 1966 with around 15,000 people; it currently has 7,876. It has a budget of $330,800,000, which means it costs the taxpayers right at $42,000 per “volunteer.” The wire story is noticeably short on facts about how the law’s $5,700,000,000 will be spent, and the White House’s website is a fact-free zone since it became Changeland™ a few months ago, so I can’t really break down how much each Americorp “volunteer” will cost. But in the Age of Obama, nothing costs less than 10 digits, not even inspiration.
Apollo posted this at 6:07 PM EDT on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 as CHANGE!, Politics and the English Language
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Screed. It refers to an opinion you disagree with, but the word itself actually means little more than “an opinion.” People use the word because it sounds bad, like scream, but, insofar as it means more than “an opinion,” screed actually refers to a lengthy and boring opinion. That’s not how people use it, though. Instead, it’s just a way to signal disapproval without explaining disapproval. Don’t use it – it’s lazy.
Opine. The same way that bloggers use screed, lawyers use opine. The other side’s lawyer is always opining. Courts are said to have opined, at least by the party appealing the ruling, and sometimes by dissenting judges. Again, it’s just a lazy word chosen for the way it sounds rather than what it means. It signals disapproval without actually disapproving. If it were used once in a great while, perhaps for when a lawyer made an argument that went particularly far afield, or when Anthony Kennedy goes off on a “at the heart of liberty” spiel, it might be appropriate. But it’s overused so much that a complete boycott is needed.
I’m sure there are others.
Apollo posted this at 6:56 PM EST on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 as Grumblin Mumblins, Politics and the English Language
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Last week, I mentioned that Andrew Ferguson had written a scorching take-down of Bill Moyers back in 1991. The New Republic put it online, and it’s still a doozy. A sample:
Like the critics who praised the show so lavishly, Movers neglects to mention (although other veterans of the ‘64 campaign are more than happy to) that it was he who insisted that the admen raise the nuclear issue against Goldwater and that indeed it was he who commissioned and approved the “attack” ads, including the Daisy spot. At hour’s end Movers delivers the Olympian summing up, in which he confesses to an uncharacteristic ambivalence: “We have to look for alternatives — using TV but using it wisely.”
This sly prevarication runs through some of Moyers’s other work as well. He has, for example, used Republican scandals as occasions for sermons about betrayals of trust, government run amok, even as his own involvement in one of the seamier episodes of government malfeasance slips quietly down the memory hole, Johnson once called Movers “my vice president in charge of everything.” By all accounts the tag was accurate. According to classified documents unearthed by the Church Committee on intelligence abuses in 1976, and others obtained by David Garrow for his The FBI and Martin Luther King (1981), while at the White House Moyers tracked the bureau’s infamous campaign against King. The surveillance, begun under Kennedy, was broadened under Johnson. The rationale at the time, and the one Movers clings to on the few occasions he has discussed his involvement, was that King’s association with supposed Communists endangered the civil rights movement.
As the campaign against King progressed, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover routinely forwarded to the White House summaries of the King wiretaps, which were placed not only in King’s home and office but also in his hotel rooms around the country. The summaries covered not only King’s dealings with associates but also his sexual activities. After receiving one such summary, Moyers instructed the FBI to disseminate it widely throughout the executive branch, to Dean Rusk. Robert McNamara, Carl Rowan, and many others. Moyers was also aware at the time of Hoover’s efforts to leak the King material to the press.
Read it all.
Hubbard posted this at 4:53 PM EST on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 as Politics and the English Language, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
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I think this op-ed is inane and sad, a bunch of platitudes culminating in an attempt to look like Obama. But I think this paragraph is uniquely peculiar:
But if it reflects our values and our histories, this special relationship is also a partnership of purpose, renewed by every generation to reflect the challenges we face. In the 1940s it found its full force defeating fascism and building the postwar international order; in the cold war era we fought the growth of nuclear weapons and when the Berlin Wall fell we saw the end of communism. In this new century, since the horrors visited on America in 2001, we have worked in partnership to defeat terrorism.
What? The Cold War was about limiting “the growth of nuclear weapons”? What does that phrase even mean? Nonsense + bad syntax = difficult reading.
Apollo posted this at 10:32 PM EST on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 as Politics and the English Language, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, Those Wacky Foreigners
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A search for the words Afghanistan civil war turns up just over 2 million hits. A search for Iraq civil war turns up just over 20 million. You’ll note that the hits for the latter search are pretty dated.
There was a time when it was all the rage for people to say that there was a “civil war” in Iraq. At the time, I thought it was foolish to focus on whether it was or wasn’t a civil war (looking back, I think that post has stood the test of time in a way the “civil war” hubbub hasn’t).
However, why aren’t the same people who called for us leaving Iraq because we shouldn’t get caught up in another country’s civil war calling for us to leave Afghanistan? It seems plain that, under any definition, what’s going on in Afghanistan now is a “civil war.” The non-government faction formerly was the government. It exerts full control over certain parts of the country where the government controls nothing. Whereas the terrorists in Iraq aimed mostly for violence in pursuit of more violence, the Taliban legitimately wants to regain control of Afghanistan. In Iraq, the factional violence didn’t start until after our arrival, pointing to our presence as a main instigator, whereas the internal fighting over who controls Afghanistan well preceded our arrival. Remember, we didn’t “invade” Afghanistan, so much as we aided the faction opposing its then-government. What’s going on in Afghanistan is factional violence in pursuit of the political control of a state. If that’s not a civil war, what is?
Yet, even as Afghanistan’s civil war descends into Mexico-like levels of violence, I’m not hearing many people say we should flee. Is that because the whole “we shouldn’t get involved in someone else’s civil war” meme was nothing more than one of the many nearby tools the anti-Iraq war crowd grabbed, not a legitimate statement of foreign policy? I thought it was a silly argument then, and I think it would be a silly argument now. Does the fact that no one’s applying it to Afghanistan imply that they perhaps recognize it wasn’t a very good argument?
Apollo posted this at 12:44 AM EST on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 as Philosophy, Politics, Politics and the English Language
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“That the federal judiciary is laboring under an increasing case load is a truism.”
- Ken Starr, “Observation About the Use of Legislative History,” 1987 Duke Law Review 371.
Apollo posted this at 3:44 PM EST on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 as Politics and the English Language
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Powerline is rightfully one of the most important conservative blogs in America, and is generally sharp and on point, so when the bloggers that run it get something spectacularly wrong, attention must be paid. First, some background about Britain.
A terrible problem in Britain right now is that there’s regular problems with keeping track of immigrants and crime. Here’s Theodore Dalrymple in the Summer of 2006 (Reading the whole article will give you a feel for how rotten the situation in Britain really is right now) [emphasis added]:
[T]he papers reported that 1,023 prisoners of foreign origin had been released from British prisons between 1999 and 2006 without having been deported. Among them were 5 killers, 7 kidnappers, 9 rapists and 39 other sex offenders, 4 arsonists, 41 burglars, 52 thieves, 93 robbers, and 204 drug offenders. Of the 1,023 prisoners, only 106 had since been traced. The Home Office, responsible for both prisons and immigration, still doesn’t know how many of the killers, arsonists, rapists, and kidnappers are at large; but it admits that most of them will never be found, at least until they are caught after committing another offense. Although these revelations forced the Home Secretary to resign, in fact the foreign criminals had been treated only as British criminals are treated. At least we can truly say that we do not discriminate in our leniency.
Scandal has followed scandal. A short time later, we learned that prisoners had been absconding from one open prison, Leyhill, at a rate of two a week for three years—323 in total since 1999, among them 22 murderers. This outrage came to light only when a senior policeman in the area of Leyhill told a member of Parliament that there had been a crime wave in the vicinity of the prison. The member of Parliament demanded the figures in the House of Commons; otherwise they would have remained secret.
Here’s Dalrymple again in Winter 2007 [emphasis added]:
Last week, the British government announced—because the opposition in Parliament forced it to announce—that 70 prisoners, including three murderers and an unspecified number of burglars, drug dealers, and holders of false passports, had escaped from a single minimum-security prison this year alone. Twenty-eight of them were still at large.
That so many of them absconded suggested that they were not quite the reformed characters that justified lower levels of security in the first place; but as usual in Britain, temporary embarrassment soon subsides into deep amnesia. The fact is that the whole episode is precisely what we have come to expect of our public administration and was nothing out of the ordinary.
The Labour government has treated crime in Britain rather like how Michael Dukakis treated it in Massachusetts: with appalling leniency. A theme is that when policemen have tried to go through normal channels to voice their concerns about crime, they get silenced; in desperation, they’ve been contacting their local Members of Parliament to get something done about crime. The Tories in opposition have rightfully been trying to figure out how bad the problems are so that they might be solved; that it might also bring down the Labour government, however, must also be understood.
Damian Green is the shadow immigration minister, and he was recently arrested for receiving sensitive documents relating to immigration and crime. It’s a passage worthy of George Orwell:
Mr Green, who is the shadow immigration minister, was arrested at his home in Kent by counter-terrorism police officers.
The arrest follows a series of leaks to the Conservatives about Government policy, including a sensitive memorandum from the Home Office’s most senior official on crime figures earlier this month.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is said to be “extremely angry” about the arrest and has privately accused the Government of “Stalinesque” behaviour.
Mr Green is understood to have been arrested at lunchtime today and is still in custody. He has not been charged.
Green has been arrested after obtaining leaked Whitehall documents. Police searched his family home and his office in the House of Commons.
He was arrested for “aiding and abetting misconduct in public office”.
It is claimed that nine counter-terrorism officers were involved in the arrest.
How, exactly, is it “leaking” when a government bureaucrat sends information to an elected official? It’d be one thing if the bureaucrat was sending information to the press. But sending figures on crime to the shadow immigration minister, particularly when immigrants and crime are a hot topic? It sounds as though people are being prosecuted for trying to do their jobs, which in this case is public safety.
Enter Powerline’s John Hinderaker [emphasis in original]:
In England as here, the leaker styles himself a “whistleblower,” but that characterization hasn’t helped him:
An alleged “whistleblower”, thought to be a male Home Office official was arrested 10 days ago.
It gives me a certain satisfaction to see the words “whistleblower” and “arrested” in the same sentence. Still, I don’t think that all leakers should be punished with a prison term, just those who illegally leak classified information the publication of which will be helpful to our enemies.
It’s interesting to consider whether the British precedent could be a harbinger of things to come in this country. Once we have a Democratic administration in place, leaking will diminish considerably, since a large majority of federal bureaucrats are Democrats. But what if a Republican official should leak information damaging to the Obama administration? Will he be a courageous whistleblower, and will newspapers (or more likely, conservative web sites) that publish the information be awarded Pulitzers? Or will the laws relating to confidentiality suddenly be enforced, with the support of the liberal press, once the shoe is on the other foot?
It seems as though Mr. Hinderaker is mixing up two issues. In Britain, there does not appear to have been a leak to the press, but rather communication of actual statistics from a government agency to an elected official. It would be as if a bureaucrat in the Department of Homeland Security sent statistics to Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the ranking minority member of the Committee of Homeland Security, and thus got both himself and Rep. King arrested. It’s not as though the bureaucrat was leaking to, say, Michelle Malkin. Further, the issues at stake here—how many criminal immigrants have been released rather than deported—are precisely the issues of public safety that should not fall under Britain’s Official Secrets Act and should be on public record.
Contrariwise, the situation in America has been serious leaks that would fall under the Official Secrets Act (if America had one, which it doesn’t). The New York Times has revealed the tactics that the CIA has used to find out what terrorists are up to; these issues never needed to be broadcasted, and in fact their publication has likely hurt America’s interest.
The real issue about Damian Green’s arrest is that in Britain, Gordon Brown’s government will harass anyone who attempts to get official statistics about crime. It’s a scandal, and it looks like Powerline botched its coverage of it.
Hubbard posted this at 2:23 PM EST on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Politics and the English Language, Those Wacky Foreigners
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