Writing yesterday about what Obama’s minions are calling our “kinetic military activity” in Libya, I noted that the folks presiding over Orwell’s Newspeak would have liked the phrase “kinetic military activity.” As a mendacious and evasive euphemism for “war” it is hard to beat. But Orwell is not the only important thinker the Obama administration’s assault on the English language brings to mind. There is also Confucius.
I read Confucius a zillion years ago in a comparative religion class. I remember almost nothing of the Analects, however, so I am grateful to a reader for supplying this bit from Book 13, Chapter 3.
Asked by a disciple how to rule a state properly, Confucius replies that it begins with rectifying the names:
“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be conducted successfully. When affairs cannot be conducted successfully, propriety will not flourish. When propriety does not flourish, punishments will not be properly meted out. When punishments are not properly meted out, the people will not know how to conduct themselves.”
That was written about 475 B.C. When will we catch up with its wisdom?
When will we catch up with this wisdom? Probably not before we’ve suffered a lot more pain, if then, Roger. Great post.
Good lord.
If you think Confucius’ ‘rectification of names’ thesis can be applied in a way that seems to merely target the left – as opposed to political discourse across the board – you have lost your bearings in reality. Perhaps keep in mind two other Analects that caution people like you from attempting to use the text as a ideological hammer: “The Master said: I am not for or against anything; I am on the side of what is appropriate” (4.10) or perhaps “The Master said: the exemplary person is broadminded but not partisan; the inferior man is partisan but not broadminded.” (2.14)
Don’t try to appropriate Confucius for narrow minded purposes, you make yourself look silly and “xiaoren” (petty and vice-oriented) in the process.
Xunzi, Mr. Kimball is engaging the words of Confucius to add further weight to his argument that the Obama administration’s use of language is contrary to good government. This isn’t a standalone piece, but an addendum to Mr. Kimball’s earlier piece, “The Emperor Seth and Kinetic Islam.” As such, it makes perfect sense that he should restrain himself to merely focusing on the Obama administration and not expand to cover government in general.
I don’t think anybody here would argue your point that political discourse across the board is rife with this kind of malfeasant tinkering. Every public official across the political spectrum should be held to the Confucian standard, and should be called on the carpet when they start trying to call a “spade” a “finely-edged earth-moving device with leverage potential.”
MWR, I think that was exactly the point Xunxi is making. Roger’s intention was to call out Obama’s use of language, so he had the intention of partisanship. If he had just pointed out the untruth of “kinetic military activity”, without the intention of making Obama look bad, he would correctly followed Confucius’ analects. Pointing out the untruth of those words is all Roger needed to do and the reader will immediately understand the point he is making for themselves without the need to have any intention or say something bad about anyone.
Well, I’m a bit puzzled. Should we not be critical of this misuse of language? Would Confucius not be appalled by it?
It’s not a good argument that everybody does it – if that is so, we should be critical of everybody, depending on their specific level of offense.
I don’t think Roger is saying “This is appalling language abuse; Republicans would do better, vote for them!”
Roger is saying “Obama is your President; he is abusing language like this; should we not call him out on it?”
Really, this is not a partisan moment. This is a moment where we traditionally forget about politics and support our President. Redefinitions like “Kinetic Military Action” make it harder for us to do that, even though I don’t think there’s a single Pajamas Media user who would not like to see Kadafy gone.
To me, that’s the issue, and it’s fair to raise.
D
Well said. Xunzi focuses on the fact that Mr. Kimball did not include in this short post the observation “Of course, this rectification of names deal applies to all politics in every land, in every time, and at every level.” Having failed to do that, Mr. Kimball has “lost [his] bearings in reality.” Shame on Kimball for failing to tie inexact terminology to the Crusades, the New Deal, the fall of Rome, and the siege of Stalingrad!
Xunzi, ONE of the “affairs [that] cannot be conducted successfully” that are of immediate concern to the nation is the Libyan madness. Kimball doesn’t think that what Carter, Reagan, or Clinton (that ardent student of verbal precision) said in the distant past is relevant to present problems so that’s why he didn’t address their rhetorical habits.
Keep your eyes focused on our present difficulties and you’ll understand that Kimball isn’t such a moron as to believe that only the left is deficient in the use of language. They are in first place these days, it’s true, but that’s for another post another day.
Xunzi, I’d bet that’s not even your real name. “If names not be correct…”
“Republicans do it too, so your argument is invalid!”
Is that really your attempt at defending Obama’s administration in this case?
Bush declared an illegal war, but Obama is only taking a kinetic military action?
Tell you what, YOU concede that Obama’s talking out the wrong orifice, and I’ll concede that Republicans do it too. And we BOTH agree that we need to start nipping it in the bud anytime it happens.
I think that for us in the Islamic (yes!), Jewish or Christian “West” – i.e., cultures that owe much or all to both Greco-Roman antiquity and to Biblical Israel – Aristotle was our Confucius. The Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation made too much of the dependence of the formal structure of its doctrine on neo-Aristotelian philosophy, including the geocentric cosmology that Aristotle had indeed espoused, and therefore opposed Copernicus and critically Galileo on this point. It therefore discredited the whole of Aristotelianism with those involved in the scientific revolution, enlarging the revolt against Aristotle that had already begun with Luther (“Aristotle – that buffoon who has misled the Church”). Yet of course, the fact that a hugely encyclopedic and systematic thinker was wrong about astronomy doesn’t mean that his system was wrong in any other respect. Alasdair Macintyre is one of those who have shown that loss of the Aristotelean schema of the virtues – qualities defined as those that one needs for moving from one’s individual human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be to one’s individual human-nature-as-it-would-be-if-it-realized-its-telos – has resulted in a global incoherence in Western moral discourse after the last people who still thought in such terms (e.g. Jane Austen or the French Revolutionaries). Anyone who despises Ayn Rand should at least note (cf Tara Smith’s books) that she did show how an Aristotelean system of moral categories, nomenclature and goals is compatible with a kind of liberal individualism – something denied by Macintyre (who espouses a kind of communitarianism), or by Leo Strauss and his school (the upshot of whose critique of Western modernity is rather similar to that of Macintyre’s).
Webutante, Confucius has you covered there, too.
To paraphrase:
There are three ways by which men learn.
The first is by introspection, which is best.
The second is by imitation, which is easiest.
The third is by experience, which is the bitterest.
Xunzi, that is true. But is it appropriate to distort language? Yes or no? That is what political correctness is about. Are you sure you are holding the sword by the right end? Wisdom is not for nothing. It has purposes. It may be that Kimball is not appropriating Confucius at all. I think, frankly, that you are at least as guilty. Kimball’s article stands without Confucius. His arguments stand without Confucius. It’s merely comical that we are still beating our heads against problems whose solutions were hinted at thousands of years ago.
That said, my clearly anti-partisan, so-very-broadminded lecturer: did you chastise the left for its caterwauling over “collateral damage?” How about “choice” when what is clearly meant is not an option of ham-on-rye vs. turkey-on-wheat, but the killing of innocents?
When the left was making up quotes and attributing them to Thomas Jefferson, did you leap out of your non-partisan place of being and say, “do not appropriate Jefferson for narrow minded purposes?”
Here’s another couple thousand year-old quote: “Take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Work on it.
Amos –
Well, yes – I did. I dislike rhetorical paraphrasing no matter what side of the political spectrum they exist on. I actually did make a lot of hay about “collateral damage” – when Dem and Rep administrations used it.
So there. What else are you looking for? I’m not inconsistent. How about Kimball?
Now let’s get back to the point: Kimball’s narrow minded attempt to appropriate Confucius for his own purposes.
Anyone who has actually read the guy will know that you don’t criticize when your own house is in disorder. Instead, you lead by example and set the grounds for change in that fashion – which is how virtue works, does it not? The last – and I mean last – way a Confucian would use a criticism would be in order to make oneself, or one’s “side” look better in comparison. And given Kimball’s partisan use of the Master, that was clearly his point.
Very, very un-Confucian indeed.
So your argument is that since Roger is a partisan he should not quote Confucius when pointing out that the administration is using language not as a means to communicate but to obfuscate? Even if the quotation is obviously on point?
“Anyone who has actually read the guy will know that you don’t criticize when your own house is in disorder.”
Are you telling us that you haven’t actually read “the guy” or that your house is in order? Or that you aren’t actually criticizing Mr. Kimball?
Regarding “Kimball’s narrow minded attempt to appropriate Confucius for his own purposes.”
1) You are claiming a sin of omission, right? Is there anything specific to this post of Kimball’s that you consider improper? Or is it just that, because he is ideologically opposed to the President, you must give him the opposite of benefit of the doubt?
2) Is it really your position that any time we write a short post criticizing a recent action of the POTUS, we must also include a list of faults committed previously by Presidents of the party opposing the current President?
3) Do you recall the legions of liberals (and some conservatives) who attacked Bush 43′s coinage of the “war on terror”? Yes, “war on terror” had its flaws. (“I would have preferred “war on Al Qaeda and its allies.”) But when you compare it to “kinetic military action,” which term is the more honest?
Fine replies to this fellow, but I can say it in two words: Tu quoque.
Also:
“So there.”
What are you, nine?
confusius says “if b.s. could fly bho would be an astronaut
What would Jesus do?
I doubt that he’d call it “kinetic military action”.
Limbaugh is right. Liberals always hide behind symbolism, false meanings, front groups, twisted definitions. They never like to let you know who they are and what they’re doing. Because they know if the people find out, they’ll be against them.
Examples: ‘Affordable Health Care Act’, ‘Center for American Progress’, ‘Community Organizer’, ‘Climate Change’, ‘contributions to the government’, ‘Agitating’.
Solution in this case? Exactly what you’re doing. Keep writing articles on this. Let the people know.
Regarding the people not knowing how to conduct themselves if the laws are not properly spelled out, I wonder what he would make of the tax code?
My Daddy, an old Montana rancher always said to call things by their right names. He had a recipe for perfect apple butter but if you made it out of road apples you wound up with a horse shit sandwich every time!
..and while on wise and ancient Chinese philosophers, there is Sun Tzu (544 BC) and from his Art of War –
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Things have not improved since Confucius, clearly.
This phenomenon of the use of language not to convey an accurate picture of reality but rather to manipuate popular sentiment for the purposes of political gain, unfortunately, is a old one, and is a symptom of corruption in a society, a corruption that asserts that power is more important than the truth. This is precisely the theme of philosopher Josef Pieper’s essay “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (1974)” . Pieper examines how Plato addressed the intellectual corruption of the sophists and its effect on society, which he summed up in these two paragraphs:
Thucydides also had something to say about the danger arising when words lose their meaning:
“Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence, became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.”
I’m beginning to like Confucius. Further down the linked page, in chapter 5, we find:
The Master said, “Though a man may be able to recite the three hundred odes, yet if, when intrusted with a governmental charge, he knows not how to act, or if, when sent to any quarter on a mission, he cannot give his replies unassisted, notwithstanding the extent of his learning, of what practical use is it?”
When I posted that quotation from Confucius, I was well aware that for Chinese people and their political culture, the Confucian legacy is strongly mixed. As I noted, I think most of his ideas about organizing society and government lead to a static society strongly divided along class lines.
However, my point was not to suggest that Confucian ideas are a good guide to follow. The fact that Hu Jintao & Co. promote his ideas (some of them at least) ought to be a great big, um, red flag, as it were.
I simply wished to quote Confucius on a point he did get right and which is highly relevant to us today. He who controls the framing of narratives controls the discussion, and by encouraging or compelling people to speak lies, political correctness undermines all of society.
Kinetic military action
[Huh!]
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothin’!
F.A. Hayek described very clearly in Road to Serfdom how socialists, fascists, totalitarians, etc manipulate language, to slowly over time change the common meaning of words as a method to achieve their goals. It is amazing how prescient he was on that point.
paraphrased from the book:
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning.
Few traits of totalitarian regimes are so confusing and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of totalitarian regimes are expressed.
The confusion becomes worse because change of the meaning of words is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people.
Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.
I recall reading a commentary on these words of Confucius. The question was posed to him by a ruler who had usurped the throne. Thus, rectifying names would mean that the ruler would first have to acknowledge his illegitimacy as ruler. Not only insightful on the part of Confucius: very brave.
There’s a business adage that says, you can’t solve the problem if you can’t (won’t) name it.
One of the most successful and consciously deceitful long-term strategies of the hard left in the U.S. has been to distort the meaning of “right wing” and “fascist.”
On a spectrum that runs from totalitarianism/slavery to anarchy/absolute freedom, communists and fascists are on the slavery side (left) and limited government advocates are on the freedom side (right). Yet the left has succeeded in equating fascist and right-wing, thereby discrediting advocates of freedom and confusing the citizenry by hiding the freedom option and keeping it out of the discussion.
“Fascist” is, of course, the kissing cousin of communism and was rocked in the same cradle back when. The left also struggles ceaselessly to establish that German National Socialists were rooted in Christianity.
Today, leftists tar Americans ardently desiring a return to constitutional government and, hence, a diminished role for the federal government and restoration of federalism and personal freedom as, you guessed it, “neo-Nazis,” which is to say people who desire the kind of totalitarian controls that afflicted Germans in National Socialist Germany. As I say, it’s a conscious effort and intellectually dishonest to the core.