Hold to nothing too violently. Every fool stands convinced: and everyone convinced is a fool; and the faultier a man's judgment, the firmer his conviction; even with the proof on your side, it is well to make concession; for your reasons are known and your gentlemanliness is recognized; ... . Gracian #183
George Rebane
In these pages we have sought, so far with limited success, to make our discussions and debates semantically crisper by using well-defined terms, and editing these definitions as necessary to capture the more nuanced meanings intended. For example, many keyboards have been pounded over the years debating the definitions and the subsequent uses of socio-political labels such as socialist, communist, capitalist, liberal, progressive, conservative, conservetarian, etc. The resulting definition derbies seem always to revolve around how attribute comprehensive should the labeled thing be before its assigned label is accepted.
Most people will accept a label such as ‘socialist’ or ‘conservative’ if the person, program, or policy can claim some sufficient number of attributes to unambiguously indicate its membership in the labeled class. As an example, a policy can safely be called socialist if it expands state’s control of the means of production or mandates market-blind distribution of goods, wealth, etc. Such common usage doesn’t call for implementing all (i.e. the comprehensive set) of the attributes of socialism. In short, a useful discourse can be had if the parties either understand each other’s use of a label, or accept a working principle that doesn’t make ‘comprehensive’ the enemy of ‘sufficient’.
Debating definitions can also serve agendas, especially if you determine that your ideology must be sold carefully to broader audiences (e.g. your lightly-read constituencies). In such cases you don’t want to reveal the complete picture too soon because your audience will then balk. In these times such has been the case when collectivists of various shades want to hide behind easy-to-embrace social give-aways without going into the details of what it will take to sustain such transfer payments, or if sustainability is even possible.
So, when you believe in a future in which the state controls more than less of our property and behaviors, a future where markets are greatly curtailed or completely eliminated by state mandated distribution policies, then you don’t want to advertise that too early, even if you believe that such a system will ultimately provide the greatest good to the greatest number. In that case you will decry the socialist label being prematurely attached to policies that are at best camouflaged in half-way houses on the road to socialism. You then will argue in favor of the comprehensive definition, and dismiss any sufficient characterization of socialism that doesn’t check off all the dictionary items listed under socialism – ‘my policy doesn’t call for the elimination of all markets, therefore it is not socialism.’
With comprehensive definitions suppressing the merely sufficient, the debate’s progress will be successfully stifled until the destination is achieved at which time it will be revealed when all of its features or attributes are in place. In such a forum, one is not allowed to identify himself, say, as a conservative unless he can check off somebody’s complete list of requirements for a conservative. The same for a ‘free market’ which is then defined as one that is not allowed to have even a smidgen of regulations under which it must operate. Or the obverse, mandating the ‘free market’ label when a massively regulated market still has a bit of wiggle room left. It all depends on your agenda.
Quite often definitions are given in terms of an overarching concept that can stand on its own, but can be expanded to have one or more appended categorical components. We recently ran into one such term – ‘collusion’ – that is much in the news these days, and forms the crux of an enlarged debate that is attended by participants all wearing ideologically colored glasses. To illustrate, for the Right ‘collusion’ is seen simply as two or more parties proceeding in confidence to accomplish some end, be it innocent or evil. The latter being the addended categorical component. To pursue its current agenda, the Left can only view ‘collusion’ in terms of its categorical component of ‘evil’ firmly clamped to the overarching definition, with the attendant logic that colluding secretly or in confidence must always and necessarily be evil – no further proof is needed. (more here)
Unfortunately, such definition derbies often lap over to embrace countless faulty logics so prevalent in the comment streams of most blogs including RR’s. The preceding semantical gymnastics are usually part of a drill that starts by characterizing everything in black/white or binary terms. If you don’t explicitly condemn/embrace something, then the clear conclusion is that you must love/hate that same thing. This is the most common and ham-brained way of rejecting the cautionary wisdom that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Related to this is the so-called ‘argument from ignorance’, so popular today, wherein one ‘asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false’. Both appeal to the same logical fallacy.
In my experience, also confirmed in these pages, it is overwhelmingly the folks on the Left who don’t want to be explicit about what they actually believe (i.e. the tenets of their credo), and consequently in a debate they sail under false colors as long as possible, and then simply quit the field when such colors no longer serve. I have yet to meet a person of the Right who, when asked, hesitates to declare the underlying tenet of his credo that gives basis for his argument on an issue. Perhaps others have had the same experience.
(Readers may always examine my credo and glossary of terms so as to correct or confirm that my own apologetics conform to my previously stated beliefs.)
Racism and Racists revisited (updated 24jul19)
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
George Rebane
In a more learned time ‘racism’ was defined by first class dictionaries like the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged) 2 ed as “a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.” Today, Dictionary.com still posts that same definition verbatim. Unfortunately, that’s where it ends.
In days of yore, and perhaps still among the more precise speakers and writers, a ‘racist’ was a person who embraced such a belief or doctrine. No longer. Today in the public forum ignorance and political cynicism rule the day, and are reinforced by the hour in print, online, in schools, and by politicians of both parties. Racist can be an indictment of someone's comments that have absolutely nothing to do with racism, simply on the invocation of 'We know what he really meant'. It is of a piece of our declining culture that does not bode well for America. One of my early commentaries on racism was ‘Who is a Racist?’; there I particularly call your attention to the intense and self-assured responses from our liberal commenters.
Today, racist is a label publicly, cynically, and even gratuitously hung around the neck of –
The list goes on indefinitely as expressions and behaviors are uncritically labeled ‘racist’. What they all share in common is that each has absolutely nothing to do with the original precise definition of racism. In spite of this, for the Left 'racist' has long become the preferred pejorative with which to tar their political opponents. So today ‘racist’ can mean anything, when it actually means nothing. The danger to our republic is that the Humpty Dumpty approach to semantics has now been baked into our justice system.
[24jul19 update] The national press is taking up the points of my above commentary. To wit, that the media offer no proof or basis for charging President Trump’s tweets to have been ‘racist’. They just continue to pile on empty moralizing, repeating the racist charge with no accompanying reasoning or evidence whatsoever. In the comment stream below, we see the echoes of this from our local liberal light-thinkers who have never been able to go beyond the lamestream’s talking points. To their benefit we beseech, ‘Lord, forgive them for they know not what they say.’
An example of this appears in ‘Prove the Tweets Were Racist’ by WSJ editorial board member Holman Jenkins. Excerpts from his piece follow –
Posted at 06:55 PM in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Culture Comments, Glossary & Semantics, Our Country | Permalink | Comments (88)
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