No Nuanced Roses

by Leo of Mars

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
- Hubert H. Humphrey

For those of you born after MTV, Hubert Humphrey was "Mister Liberal", the Al Gore of the 1960's. (Technically, Albert Gore, Sr. was the Al Gore of the 1960's, but you know what I mean.)  The quote from Humphrey vividly illustrates the problem with modern liberalism.

The reference to Shakespeare, an English writer who was studied in American schools before the destruction of Western Culture, is to his Romeo and Juliet, 1594.  In context, Juliet is telling Romeo that it doesn't matter that he is from her family's traditional enemy, the Montegues -- only a name.  What matters is the reality of who he is.

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;"

Juliet harkens back to Aristotle and anticipates American philosopher Ayn Rand who put it this way:  A is A.  Reality is reality.  But for Humphrey, a.k.a. "The Happy Warrior", A can be B, or C or anything we feel like calling it.  And when we call it something else, he claims, it changes.  An illegal alien becomes an "undocumented worker", surrender becomes "phased withdrawal", tax increases become "revenue enhancements", spending your tax dollars becomes "investing", and hypocritically changing your opinion for short term political gain becomes "a nuanced position". English writer George Orwell put it this way:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible…Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness…Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. – George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” in Why I Write

When you go to the polls in a few days, consider that none of the "issues" that the candidates are discussing are likely to be what they are dealing with after they are elected.  Jimmy Carter could not have anticipated the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Bill Clinton didn't even know Monica, and George Bush wanted to focus on education, not a global war on terror. What matters is whether you can trust them, and whether they will call a rose a rose.

Comments

[robertbob1]

Your treatment of relativism vs. absolutes additionally reminds me of Dr. Francis Schaeffer, "A is not non-A."

[Leo]

Thanks for the heads-up on Schaeffer. I've added his book, "A Christian Manifesto", to my wish list on Amazon.com.

[jasa iklan]

thanks a lot dear, im very interesting for your article. im very impresing for this :)

jasa iklan