Speaking of terms

Language, clarity, consistancy…some of my favorite determinations. I’m determined to study them – and they determine what we believe and how we act. Seems so straightforward.

And yet they get so darned convoluted. That’s why I enjoy analysis like this from Diogenes, the Catholic World News rascal:

in their own words

The dominant trend in American conservatism today is made up of people who are “enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral.”

OK, I found that claim in a op-ed piece, published in the pages of the notoriously liberal Boston Globe. So you might think the writer is just a few degrees off true magnetic north when it comes to objectivity.

But wait. The writer is citing the work of a “leading researcher” (funny; he doesn’t name him). More remarkably, that string of epithets is not something the writer or his “researcher” friend made up, but “how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.”

If you were being anonymously tested– and there’s a good chance you were, since “tens of thousands” of people have been– would you describe yourself as “highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral.” That’s what our op-ed writer claims.

So here’s what it comes down to: Are you going to accept that description as factual? Or are you going to be so suspicious (as well as highly prejudiced and amoral) that you doubt the word of Watergate mastermind John Dean?

Ok, follow the logic. It’s a good argument. Read the Globe piece here.