Thank you, Marshall’s, for reminding me of one of our Nation’s great comedy series.
May 10, 2010
February 6, 2010
Heads up – I’m reading John Ferling’s A Leap in the Dark. So far, it’s a great read. The book covers American history approximately between 1750 and 1800; I wanted it mainly for more context with our Federalist project. But I doubt I’ll write much more about this one on the forest scale; rather, I want to climb the occasional tree.
Yesterday, happily snowed home, I read about the first Continental Congress’s debates while drafting a note to the King. Questions, wrote Ferling, “over the colonists’ rights has stirred a firefight.”
The radicals in the committee insisted that Americans had derived their rights from nature; two years later this would become the now familiar “truth” that “all men are … endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Conservatives argued that the rights enjoyed by the colonists had been bestowed by the English constitution and the colonial charters. The differences were resolved by a compromise. The eventual Statement of Rights and Grievances listed all three as sources of the rights of colonists.
(p120)
It the great old question, and always worth considering. Do we, with Locke, believe that a human being possesses rights upon birth, regardless of the amount of and type of society and government the human pops out into? Or, chuckling with Bentham, is that a bunch of nonsense on stilts?
It occurs to me the the word “rights” has no meaning without a society to define it. And there are no “rights” without a government to set them apart for protection. But, in governments such as ours, we identify rights by looking into the inalienable world of natural law. So, government creates rights, but does so by looking for rights that government is powerless to create. Sounds like a koan.
October 4, 2008
There’s no ‘I’ in team, there’s no ‘U’ either
Posted by Andrew under politics, semantics | Tags: politics, semantics |Leave a Comment
We need to dispense with the phrase “team of mavericks.”
1. An unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.2. One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter.
The definition of “maverick” precludes there being a team of them. McCain/Palin can, without violating semantics, refer to their ticket as a “couple of mavericks.” This might call our attention to what their catch-phrase really means: that they propose serious, independent debate between themselves, and that (according to their maverick natures) they won’t really listen to the others’ advise.
Late Update:
I came across this piece in the Times giving the etymology of “maverick.” Turns out the Maverick family is none too happy about the word’s late usage.
