Chris Matthews opines: “I think we’re always right to back nationalism.”
He’s talking about the ongoing Middle Eastern revolts, but the claim as it stands is perfectly general – and seems open to the occasional counterexample.
Tag Archives | Lapsus Linguae
Cognitive Dissonance in Tucson
Pundits are reacting with gross (but predictable) inconsistency to the Tucson shooting: denouncing all calls for violence – even purely metaphorical ones – only to issue their own calls for violence of a decidedly non-metaphorical sort, in the form of restrictions on free speech or gun ownership or equal protection or whatever.
So far is our political culture in the grip of what I’ve elsewhere called the incantational model of state violence that they cannot even see their own everyday political advocacy as an instance of incitement to violence, let alone consider what role the institutionalised violence they support might play in creating a culture in which freelance statists like Jared Loughner can view firing into a crowd as an acceptable way of addressing their grievances.
The deaths and maimings of the victims in the Tucson shooting are horrendous; but the media’s selective focus on them, while similar but far more frequent massacres by American soldiers and police officers are ignored, is yet another a sign of profound moral blindness.
There was a further inconsistency in Sheriff Dupnik’s blaming the incident on “vitriol … about tearing down the government,” while simultaneously condemning Arizona as a “mecca for prejudice and bigotry” – presumably a reference to the state’s draconian anti-immigrant policies. After all, Arizona’s ethnic-cleansing laws are not exactly the product of anti-government sentiment; on the contrary, they represent government at its most intrusive and virulent. But to the statist mind, the state is such a noble institution that its greatest crimes must somehow be reinterpreted as the fruit of antistatist rhetoric!
How To Do Things With Words
I propose some new terminology: left-conflationism and right-conflationism.
Left-conflationism is the error of treating the evils of existing corporatist capitalism as though they constituted an objection to a freed market. Right-conflationism is the error of treating the virtues of a freed market as though they constituted a justification of the evils of existing corporatist capitalism.
Yes, these are basically just Kevin’s “vulgar liberalism” and “vulgar libertarianism” in new garb. And yes, the new terms sound more awkward and jargony than their predecessors.
But the advantage I claim for them is that they also sound less insulting than their predecessors. Of course neither set of terms entails anything about the etiology of the views it names. Nevertheless, left-conflationism and right-conflationism sound like intellectual mistakes, ones that well-meaning people might fall into; by contrast, vulgar liberalism and vulgar libertarianism sound like character flaws – the outlooks of, well, vulgar people. And to be sure, in many cases they may be. But not all; and we only make it harder for ourselves when our terminology alienates the very people we’re trying to persuade.
I’m not suggesting that we should simply junk the terms “vulgar liberalism” and “vulgar libertarianism.” There’s a time for polemics, and when we want polemical terms it’s handy to have them. But when we’re not engaged in polemics, it’s also handy to have a term for our interlocutors’ position that isn’t a conversation-stopper.
With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?
Amusingly, Democrats in several states have apparently been running fake attack ads against Libertarian candidates that describe them in terms designed to appeal to Tea-Party-style Republicans so as to split the Republican vote. Here are a couple of samples (click on them to enlarge):
I call this such ads “fake” attack ads because although the Democrats do disagree with the positions they ascribe to the Libertarian candidate, the goal of the ad is to increase rather than to decrease support for that candidate. (Notice that the ad never identifies its target as Libertarian, thus preventing anyone from wondering “why are the Democrats wasting money attacking a third-party candidate with low poll numbers?” They’re also counting on people not wondering “why would the Democrats use ‘outsider’ as a pejorative term when most voters identify positively with it?” or “why are they surrounding the person they’re attacking with flags and American Revolution imagery?”)
In other news, I see that I am, at the moment, the first name mentioned in the Wikipedia article on libertarianism!
The Sinister Truth
Christopher Hitchens looking sinister
To his credit, Christopher Hitchens is no fan of the anti-mosqueteers, whose arguments he has called “so stupid and demagogic as to be beneath notice.” But, as usual, he undermines his case by issuing very anti-mosqueteer-ish attacks on Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the non-ground-Zero non-mosque.
I don’t know enough about Faisal Rauf to assess the charge that he’s less moderate than he seems. I do know, however, that the main argument that Hitchens and others have been offering savours of merde du taureau.
Hitchens’ (and others’) chief case against the imam is that he made shady and creepy, or sinister (a favourite term of Hitchens’), remarks about 9/11 on 60 Minutes a few weeks after the attacks.
So okay, let’s check out Faisal Rauf’s shady, creepy, sinister sentiments:
Faisal Abdul Rauf, perhaps strangling an invisible baby
Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. … There are always people who will do peculiar things, and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. … God says in the Koran that they think that they are doing right, but they are doing wrong. … [Anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world] is a reaction against the US government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, and where we ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries. … I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened …. because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.
Oh, I see. So by “shady,” “creepy,” and “sinister,” Hitchens evidently means “utterly reasonable and obviously true.” No wonder he wrote a book about Orwell.
Insofar As They’re Beings, Yes
Exchange last night in the elevator:
MY INTERLOCUTOR: What’s your field of study?
ME: Philosophy.
MY INTERLOCUTOR: Does that study, like, rocks and stuff?