Words I hate

I hate the common uses of the word "fair". This isn't usually the same for everyone. It's considered by many to be obviously fair to take from the more productive members of society and distribute to the less productive members. This doesn't seem fair to everyone and certainly isn't good for the economy. 

     Some seem to think things are improved by referring to "fair share" but this usually compounds the problem. Everyone will agree that 100% is not fair and the famous Laffer Curve takes note of this. ( The revenue from an income tax is zero at zero rate and zero at a rate of 100% because no one will work for nothing--we'll still have voluntarism for no pay but who would fill out the obnoxious income tax paperwork?) The Laffer Curve is problematical when one endeavors to find where the maximum is -- the rate at which maximum extraction of tax revenue occurs, or more interesting, the rate BELOW WHICH revenues increase. Perhaps surprisingly, people in lower brackets, when polled, seem to think that a TOTAL tax of 25% ( including all taxes: Federal, State, Municipal, Payroll, FICA, etc ) is the maximum "fair" rate. 

I hate the words "root causes of ..." various things: crime, terrorism, cruelty, hatred,... This takes responsibility away from those individuals or groups guilty of various things and puts it on society ( or some country or class ) instead. A classical reference is to the "Officer Krupke Song" in West Side Story: "I'm depraved because I'm deprived.'

I hate current use of the word "equal". Equal opportunity is regularly confused ( or deliberated conflated ) with equal results or equal abilities. When the Constitution says all men ( clearly meaning all human beings ) are created equal it is meant that all should have equal opportunity insofar as government can be constrained from enforcing unequal opportunity. It does not mean that short basketball players get to shoot at lower baskets or get more points for sinking a shot. Affirmative Action and quotas are a vexatious aspect of this: not at all, permanent or temporary. If temporary, when not? 

The other use, stressing results, implies that inequality is "obviously" ( another word I hate because it is often used when no argument can be found ) bad. Many would prefer lowering the living standards of the wealthy to raising the living standards of the poor so long as the "inequality" is reduced. The "Gini coefficient" for incomes ( not even standards of living ) is looked to as a measure of justice in a group or society. Some see little merit in raising the standard for everyone if Bill Gates gets even more. For myself, it takes nothing away from me to have someone else get more so long as I get what I need. A favorite joke about the Middle East along these lines describes three men praying:

Jew: God, my neighbor has a goat. Please give me one like his.

Christian: Lord, my neighbor has a goat. Please give me his.

Muslim: Allah, my neighbor has a goat. Please kill it.

Moreover, there is only so much utility that can be had from more income and more wealth. More consumption ( being an actual drain on society's resources ) is more problematical ( e.g. Al Gore's excessive use of energy and generation of CO2 ) but, even there, only so much individual consumption can be had. Individual utility functions are saturated well before significant wealth is expended.  In fact, it has been estimated that Warren Buffet has probably spent no more than $10MILLION on himself and his family over his almost eighty years for actual consumption, despite being "worth" tens of Billions. Marx would say that money buys power but politicians have power and all the wealthy can do is buy politicians.

I especially and generically hate all misuses of language in the interests of "political correctness." (This, too, depends on your group but is generally applied to the Liberal/Left.)

The War on Terror was, itself, a terrible choice of language since it was actually a war on terrorISTs and of a specific, Radical Islamist type. It was, however, an awkward and vague circumlocution intended by W Bush to exculpate Muslims in general. 

     That knowledgeable theologian informed all that "Islam is a religion of peace." Further, it was correctly noted that not all Muslims are terrorists while avoiding the truth, made salient on 9/11, that almost all terrorists are Muslim ( making allowance for non-Muslim, but Arab, terrorists  like George Habash or linked to them --like the Japanese Red Army and the Baader-Meinhof Group ) and that most Muslims, as determined by polling, support those who are. Almost none oppose the terrorists and terrorism done by Muslims. (Cf. 'root causes' , 'fair', etc )

     Having decried "War on Terror", the recent substitution of "overseas contingency operations" is absurd. Somehow, despite the original intent, Muslims are now said to consider the neutral WoT to be aimed at them and are offended and must be mollified.

     The Department of Homeland Security is no longer responsible to deter "terrorism" but "man-made disasters". This is not only absurd but misleading. Man-made disasters include unmotivated acts like the Bhopal disaster, or Chernobyl or Three Mile Island ( not anywhere near as serious as Chernobyl or at all ). Also included are deliberate acts of destruction or political assassination that are not specifically terrorism. If the protagonist in The Fountainhead blew up his own architectural creation, it wasn't an act of terror. If someone clearcuts an old forest of redwoods, it is man-made destruction and a disaster but not terrorism. Spiking a tree so that a logger is injured IS terrorism.

     Terrorism is the deliberate use of attacks, usually on innocent civilians,  for the purpose of "terrorizing"/ scaring/ persuading or dissuading, the general population in some direction or just causing general demoralization, confusion and chaos. Sometimes people are terrorized to force them to convert to the terrorist's religion, to force their government off the terrorist's putative property ( e.g. force the U.S. to withdraw from The Land of Two Shrines ( SAUDI ARABIA ) ) or to cause the public to insist on a change in policy.

     Sometimes it's simple hatred. When asked "what do the terrorists expect?", the answer is often that of Goldfinger to James Bond, "I expect you to die, Mr. Bond." The situation in Northern Ireland was eventually amenable to solution because the  goal of the IRA terrorists was purely political. Typically, they would bomb HARROD'S in London BUT call first to warn people to leave. Their hunger strikes unto death were "martyrdom operations" but didn't involve killing anyone else. 

     The 9/11 terrorists could have destroyed the Statue of Liberty for great symbolic significance and publicity but they attacked the World Trade Center at the start of a workday because they wanted to kill as many people as possible.

OTHER WORDS I HATE ARE THE CASUAL USE OF "LEFT" AND "RIGHT". Not everything falls easily into a linear display. 

     Left and Liberal in the U.S. are simplistically taken to mean: pro-Choice, secular,believe in Darwin, for gay marriage, big government, big spending, high taxes, very progressive tax system in the interests of fairness, pacifist in foreign policy, protectionist because of union base, weak on national defense, cradle-to-grave welfarism, activist judges. Usually this is taken to mean the Democratic Party. 

     Conservative in the U.S. is usually taken to mean pro-Life, religious, Creationist, against gay marriage and civil unions, for small government, restrained spending, low taxes consistent with fiscal responsibility, flat tax, active and internationalist in foreign policy, free-trade, strong on national defense, for self-reliance and entrepreneurialism, in favor of strict constructionist judges who hark back to the Constitution and the intent of the founders albeit subject to amendment. This is popularly taken to be the Republican position.

     Anyone who votes a party line ticket on the basis of this characterization is likely a fool or someone who has personal allegiances to one party or another that over-ride thinking. What do you call someone who follows a broken path through these categories? Someone, say, who accepts the freedom and limitations of Roe v Wade, is personally secular but accepts the Judeo-Christian origins and traditions of the country and respects the expression of religious feelings in public; someone who finds it unthinkable that anyone doesn't accept Darwin, believes government is inefficient and wants it minimal although regulation and spending on the truly unfortunate in society are OK, is more concerned with raising the GDP / person and the standard of living than flattening out society, and is strong on national defense, etc. Left-Right or Democrat-Republican or Liberal-Conservative doesn't capture the situation in binary form. 

     Was Nazism only "right-wing"? It believed in state control and called itself National Socialism. Better is to describe things in more dimensions that the one of the line. It's better to use at least TWO dimensions: LEFT-RIGHT along the usual horizontal dimension but (politically) AUTHORITARIAN-LIBERTARIAN along the vertical axis. Nazism is best characterized as being a line across the top of the plot since Authoritarianism was its salient characteristic. Other dimensions are needed to describe other features such as SOCIALLY AUTHORITARIAN /SOCIALLY LIBERAL and, perhaps, TOLERANCE-INTOLERANCE. 

     We are fooled by the American two party system; nuances are still present although not as obvious as in the multidimensional, and numerous, parties in the parliamentary systems in Europe and Israel. Britain is mostly two, but occasionally three. Even two dimensions, however, provide vastly more insight than one and "moderate" Democrats are often closer to "moderate Republicans" than one might think and closer than either to "extreme" liberals or extreme conservatives. 

     Each party suffers from having special-interest groups as their principALs ( rather than having only principLEs ): gays, women, blacks, Hispanics, union leaders ( less so the rank-and-file except when they vote their parochial interests like teachers, government workers, the UAW), environmentalists, trial lawyers, civil libertarians all tend to be constituencies of the Democratic Party. Small business people, the middling wealthy on Wall Street ( the super-rich are split ), doctors and professionals other than trial lawyers, evangelicals and other religious people, gun owners, fiscal conservatives, American chauvinists all tend to be constituencies of the Republican Party. Their total base constituencies number fewer than those of the Democrats so Republicans are dependent on the support of Independents, uncommitted people who swing with the issues and candidates and tend to vote on principle rather than party.