Language, Race, and Man

"Man belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs to himself." --Ernest Renan

To Capitulate or Not to Capitulate? That Is the Question

Why is it bad to capitulate but good to recapitulate, especially since no one could recapitulate without first capitulating?

Can't We All Get Along?

We ought to be able to discuss how to reasonably accommodate "trans-gender" people without gaslighting the public about well-established fundamental and immutable biological facts, muddying the language, smearing opponents as phobic bigots, or violating anyone's rights.

Language and Reality

Language doesn't block us from direct cognitive contact with reality. It facilitates that contact. Philosophers who express disagreement, by that fact alone, can't help but confirm it.

Language, Necessity, and Convenience

If we ever got to the point where the words man and woman (etc.) commonly denoted only one's subjective "gender identity" rather than the possession of one of two (and only two) kinds gonads and thus the potential to make one of the two (and only two) kinds of gametes required for reproduction, then people will spontaneously come up with other words to take the place of the redefined ones. Why? Because human beings clearly like having and even need such words to talk about what they clearly want to talk about and will keep on talking about no matter what. After millions of years of evolutionary natural selection and especially sexual selection, the two roles in reproduction color many subjects of human interest, even subjects that may seem remote from reproduction. That is why all languages and cultures likely have counterparts to our man, woman, and so on. They refer to salient human features of universal interest. 

So here's my question: if the linguistic change happens (and I doubt it ever will), will the trans activists/ideologues (I'm not talking about trans people who just want to live) then seek inclusion under the new labels and start the process all over again? Probably -- unless the ideological avant-garde gives up its commitment to compelling other people to validate their identities. People of course should be free to identify themselves in any way they choose, and of course they should never be subjected to aggression by the state or by private parties because of their peaceful choices. But they should not be free to force others through the state or directly to "see" them as they see themselves. The matter of identity (which is necessarily social) should be confined to the realm of persuasion.

Recommended Reading (to which I will likely add in the future)

"How Trans Identity Politics Imprisons Us All," Tim Black, Spiked Online

"The New Evolution Deniers," Colin Wright, Quillette

"Sex Is Not a Spectrum," Colin Wright, Reality's Last Stand

"No One Is Born in the 'Wrong Body,'" William J. Malone, Colin M. Wright, and Julie D. Robertson, Quillette

"J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking Out on Sex and Gender Issues," J.K. Rowling, jkrowling.com

"Why Self-Identification Should Not Legally Make You a Woman," Kathleen Stock, The Conversation

"Changing the Concept of 'Woman' Will Cause Unintended Harms," Kathleen Stock, The Economist

"How to Be a Heretic," Kathleen Stock, The Spectator

TGIF: Rigged Political Language

It's an old trick: gain advantage over others by hiding one's meaning behind euphemisms and other forms of linguistic camouflage and misdirection. People do this in all walks of life, but politicians make careers of it. If they engage in straight talk at all, it is by far the exception. The journalist Michael Kinsley defined a gaffe as "when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."

Obfuscation is the currency of politics. Little has changed since Oscar Wilde's time: "Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.”

Libertarians have emphasized this scam for years. When they say that taxation is theft, they offer an illustration. If you threatened to harm people, say, by imprisonment, unless they surrendered some of their incomes each year, you would be prosecuted for extortion, even if you planned to do good works with the money. Punishment would then follow. Politicians do the same thing, except that taxation is not illegal.

When the government orders people to leave their homes so politicians may put the land to other uses, that is also theft. But it is called by the high-sounding term eminent domain. That euphemism adds to the mystique of the state as it reveals what ought to be a repugnant idea: that the government is the supreme owner of all land in its jurisdiction -- even in the United States, whose Constitution implicitly embraces that principle. True, eminent domain is not an enumerated power (so much for the doctrine of the limited power), but it is acknowledged indirectly in the clause about compensation in the subsequently added Fifth Amendment. This shows that the framers thought the power to take private property was inherent in the sovereign.

The so-called "takings clause" is an odd part of the Bill of Rights. It proclaims that people have a right to "just compensation" whenever the government violates their right to property. That the government pays what it calls "just compensation" does not make eminent domain alright. What makes compensation just in a normal transaction is that the buyer and seller freely agree to the amount. Since sellers are coerced under eminent domain, no compensation qualifies as just.

If we set our minds to it, we could all find many more examples of political euphemisms. The Department of Defense was once called the Department of War. The term free election disguises the fact that voters choose among politicians under duress: they will be coerced by government policy whether or not they participate in the election. Climate policy ought to be called pro-poverty policy. Trade policy would better be known as crony-reward policy. Government intelligence and military justice ... well, you get the idea.

Scanning the recent headlines, I notice that many places are enacting so-called gun-buyback programs. What a euphemism that is. You would think that the only thing that the government could buy back was something that it had originally sold. That's what back means in such a phrase. But state and local governments don't sell guns to citizens, so how can they buy them back?

I concede that the recent programs appear to be voluntary, although the money paid (sometimes in the form of grocery gift cards) is taken by force from the taxpayers. So the politicians aren't even buying back with their own money. In the past, however, buyback campaigns were mandatory, and some favor compulsion today. For example, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke favorably about Australia's compulsory program. Beto O'Rourke, who sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a compulsory "assault weapons" buyback.

Incidentally, the National Bureau of Economic Research recently published a paper (for which I cannot vouch) purporting to demonstrate that gun violence is not reduced in the United States when governments buy and destroy guns turned in by citizens:

Gun buyback programs (GBPs), which use public funds to purchase civilians' privately-owned firearms, aim to reduce gun violence. However, next to nothing is known about their effects on firearm-related crime or deaths. Using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System, we find no evidence that GBPs reduce gun crime. Given our estimated null findings, with 95 percent confidence, we can rule out decreases in firearm-related crime of greater than 1.3 percent during the year following a buyback. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, we also find no evidence that GBPs reduce suicides or homicides where a firearm was involved. These results call into question the efficacy of city gun buyback programs in their current form.

This isn't surprising. People with violent intent aren't likely to sell their guns "back" to the government.

At any rate, we ought to be clear about what we call these programs. Governments demonize guns (rather than bad users of guns) by bribing people with stolen money.

We might actually roll back government power if the exercise of that power were not systematically obscured by euphemisms.

Rigging the Debate

Calling something"reform" biases the discussion from the start. It's question-begging. Whether the proposed changes actually amount to reform -- that is, improvement -- is precisely what is in dispute.