When Reporters Don’t Understand Ten Cent Words…
By Shaun Kenney | Sunday, August 21st, 2011 | Policy…you get stories such as these from Scott Galupo at U.S. News and World Report:
But, later in the body of the piece, Team Cuccinelli begins to play other, more presently familiar cards. Glenn Beck fans will recognize the faces in the rogue’s gallery: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, progressive philosopher John Dewey, and others who, this argument goes, created the post-New Deal legal and philosophical edifice. [Check out our editorial cartoons on healthcare.]
Wouldn’t you know it, this welfare-state stuff constitutes a violation of natural law—which,ipso facto, means economic laissez-faire—and a lurch into moral chaos. Echoing the newly popular Hayek, Cuccinelli’s article asserts the primacy of economic rights while characterizing as relativistic the not-exclusively-liberal jurisprudential argument that personhood and dignity precede the marketplace. (Last I checked, I’ve never seen an unborn baby sign a contract.)
Come conclusion time, the piece sounds eerily like it’s not merely advocating the curtailment of an otherwise defensible attempt to advance the national interest, but rather like a full-throated libertarian manifesto.
Bla-a-a-ah blah blah blah blah! says the U.S. News and World Report as they channel their inner Homer Simpson.
So to review: DO NOT use ten-cent words or anything with more than two syllables around today’s journalist, because if they don’t understand you… they’ll just mock you. Makes total sense.
…and of course, that’s what you want, gentle reader. Otherwise, folks might actually take the time to appreciate deeper thought, especially when it comes from Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli. Perhaps even beyond the knee-jerk seven word sound bites that our self-described cultural night watchmen laugh at Americans for not understanding, and forcing them to write down to the fifth grade level (no joke — your news is written for fifth to eighth graders)?
Bottom line? Cuccinelli presented a well-thought out designed-for-public-consumption argument against Obamacare, rather than the typical “nuh-uh” that constitutes most of what substitutes for debate and discussion today. You can decide which is better for the country.
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About the author
Shaun Kenney is the Chairman of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors, former Communications Director for the Republican Party of Virginia, and an active blogger since 2002. Shaun lives in Thomas Jefferson's backyard with his wife, six children, and a modest attempt at a farm in Kents Store, Virginia.
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8 Responses to "When Reporters Don’t Understand Ten Cent Words…"
The heck with reporters not understanding “ten cent words” words. I don’t have a clue what Galupo is saying but I assume its “priceless”.
Galupo made it pretty clear that the Cuccinelli argument was way too esoteric for him. Kinda disappointing, IMO.
But Shaun that’s my point. Galupo’r response or diatribe was too esoteric for Me.
…and with a name like Valentinus, that’s hard to do.
When I got to Galupo’s easy and quick dismissal of natural law my rolly eyed “whatever” circuit breaker went off and I ended up with a cool beverage and a chicken salad sandwich watching Gunga Din on TMC. It’s like journalists can just write anything and it doesn’t even matter, words become devoid of substance as it all melds into a kind of meaningless noise. You know, hey, that stupid natural law stuff, na na na.
What is especially interesting in the Galupo piece is his use of “libertarian” as synonymous with “evil.” This is something libertarians are long accustomed to, but which used to happen in smaller, less prominent formats. Since libertarian thought has gone mainstream, the formerly-mainstream right and left use the synonymity quite frequently.
The only thing missing from the Galupo piece is a conflation of “libertarian” with “Anarchist.”
I also must recall the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, when one red-faced Joe Biden confronted Thomas with a copy of a book titled “Natural Law” and demanded that Thomas disavow it.
I have rights because I’m here and, Shawn, because I’m sentient enough to defend them by resisting usurpers, whether aliens or Mordor-on-the-Potomac.
It is obvious by now that we can’t afford our current welfare / warfare state, let alone some insane expansion of it. I applaud the AG’s suit and effort; resistance is not futile. As for me, I am totally focused on economics.
Don’t be fooled by “wealth affect” stock pumping, lies about inflation, and talk of “recovery.” Any Obummer jobs program will be FDR-like, in a crass effort to keep the debate within the left-right paradigm. Like FDR’s programs, it / they will only make matters worse if enacted. Actually allowing free market capitalism to flourish, by getting government out of the way and letting losses be realized, will NOT be discussed. The problems with the economy are debt and intervention. More debt and more intervention will only deepen the destruction. On the other side of this comes the free market reawakening; the populist underpinnings of this are already plainly visible. I win.
The bus is no longer headed for the cliff; it has gone over it. Got popcorn?
If any of you ever imagined doing me a favor, please read Mises’ “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” It’s about price signals and what happens to an economy when they are thwarted by appointed boards of wise men. It’s available online free. It’s brief and very enlightening.
Market snapshot 8/22/11, 1114 am:
Bloomberg; “U.S. Stocks Rise on Fed Stimulus Speculation”
S&P up 0.7%
Gold up 2%
Silver up 3%
Newmont Mining up 4.6%
Pan American Silver up 7.2%
Do you guys understand yet? Don’t you see where this goes?
Wealth cannot be printed, and it cannot be redistributed until it is first produced. Give us back our free markets and we will try to save ourselves. As a consequence, we might wind up saving you as well.
Damned “anarchists.”
Jamie –
…is positivist ethics, and not the natural law.
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