John Steele Gordon Is a Big DooDoo Head

Sometimes it seems almost impossible to respond to a person on their level. I tried to think of a more infantile comeback but is as far as I can go.

The concept that attempts to shape the language used to ones advantage as being a peculiar invention or tool of the left is asinine enough. If the left differs from the right in this arena it is in their ineptness not in their over use of this method. One example alone the re-branding of the estate tax alone as the "death tax" alone is enough to show the right uses such language play both self consciously and to great effect. But in reality such language play goes back to time immemorial.

However Mr. Gordon's article on the use of diacritical marks goes well beyond this sophistry into a land of rhetoric that makes "I am rubber and you are glue what you call me bounces and sticks on you." Look positively brilliant by comparison.

Firstly the absence of use of diacritical marks is largely due to two temporary circumstances. Firstly Diacritical marks used to be difficult to produce in many documents. Often times they would be hand written above typed words and then the work printed from a photographic plate of the result. Secondly the large expansion of higher education associated with the Baby Boomer generation produced college students that had less strenuous backgrounds, especially in language.

An example of the type of students who attended college previously were some of my classmates who had attended a prominent Catholic school in New Orleans. They were quite proficient at both Latin and Greek. I received a collection of college books from my Lutheran minster and many of them where in Latin and German. An African American Professor who taught me in the 1990's said that if I were serious about academia as a profession I would learn German.

Until the sixties it was quite common for text books written in English to just go off for pages in untranslated this or that. I can't say the number of times that I have read the sentences along the lines of -- And the most important thing to remember is followed by up to several pages of untranslated text in a foreign language, most often German.

Now both trends have changed. Computers have made it much easier to add diacritical marks. And University admissions have gotten much more competitive again. Foreign language is taken much more seriously.

Diacritical marks aren't just some decoration. They convey meaning, often meaning as important as the letters. While it is perfectly possible to read English without the vowels, it is almost impossible especially for a foreigner to read pinyin without the diacritical marks that are essential to meaning. Pinyin itself is a version of Chinese writing using Latin letters. The diacritical marks represent tones. Different tones make different words. The wrong tone can transfer an innocuous term into a grave insult.

Why would you want less information. And writing in Commentary's Contention blog Mr. Gordon should certainly value the desire of people to learn the language of their ancestors. Using the correct words helps English language learners of foreign languages of all stripes.

The idea that this is some one way street is also ridiculous. Reading almost any foreign paper you can find no end of English words. China now produces many books in Pinyin primarily for foreign readers. And the use of native words can convey real meaning. Even in the Pentateuch even where the words are exactly the same the old testament and the Torah represent very different works whose separate religious and historical traditions have attributed very different meanings to the same passages. To refer to the Old Testament when one means the Torah is an error not a convenience.

I don't know what Gordon is trying to convey. Does he not want to provide the reader with important information about the meaning of what he is writing. Does he only read English and no other language? Has he not read anything printed before 1950? Or, is he just a big DooDoo head?

What's the Mission

Commentary's current catchphrase is "It's not a just a Magazine it's a mission. But what is that mission exactly? There has been much talk lately about the "Israel lobby" and it's nefarious influence on American policies. There may or may not be an "Israel lobby" but a quick read of Commentary makes it clear that if such a thing does exist it Commentary is certainly not one of its organs.

The recent posting "Does Will Prefer a Nuclear Iran to a Neocon Washington?" by Jonathan Tobin is a case in point. The article basically makes two points. First that the neocons where right about Iraq and they are right about Iran as well.

I will deal with the two arguments in reverse order. The argument that Iran is an existential threat to the United States is patently ludicrous. Iran does not have a nuclear bomb. Iran doesn't have missiles which can reach the United States. And even if they were to take out an American city, this would not put the United States in mortal danger. Iran might in a couple of years pose an existential threat to Israel.

But even this would almost certainly not truly manifest for years probably decades. Iran has been nothing if not a logical operator. Iran's suppression of the pro-democracy demonstrators was quite restrained. The Chinese who do have nuclear weapons ready to launch capable of taking out several US cities were more violent in putting down the Muslim demonstrators in it's western provinces. But one hardly hears about China on Commentary. Iran is clearly not suicidal. The chances of a first strike on Israel, which probably has hundreds of nuclear weapons is incredibly remote.

The real fear that Israeli partisans have is that with a nuclear deterrent Iran could through the support of terrorism in Lebanon and Israel grind Israel down to the point where it would be overwhelmed with demographic disasters posed by the occupied territories, and the recent decision to throw away the forty years of remarkable loyalty of Arab Israeli citizens over a few peaceful demonstrations. The inflation of the Iranian threat seems to be a pro-Israel position. But it must be remembered that the real threat to Israel is the demographic pressures of Arabs in Israel and in the occupied territories. Iran could only facilitate the crises which is almost entirely of Israel's own making.

But the real indication that Mr. Tobin's heart is not with Israel is the first argument. One could make an argument that Iraq has been a success for the United States, though there are great difficulties. However, it is almost impossible to make the argument that the Iraq war has been a success for Israel. The destruction of the Hussein government allowed Iran to greatly expand its power in the peninsula. The ability of Iran to pose a real threat to Israel though terrorism is almost entirely the result of the Iraq war. A true Israeli partisan could not call the Iraq war a success without qualifying that statement with an acknowledgment of the war's cost to Israel's strategic decision.

What then is the mission? If Commentary is not primarily advancing America's interest and also not primarily advancing Israel's interest, whose interest is advancing? One could argue that the magazine is advancing the interest of the Republican party. It is true that the articles are almost universally critical of the Democratic party and supportive of the Republican party and Jennifer Rubin does seem to envision herself as as Jewish Sarah Palin, but even this association misses the mark.

Deep down Commentary is a neocon magazine. And neocon's are their own true north their own mission. They are no more loyal to Israel than America or the Soviet Union. They are no more Jewish than Atheist than Jewish. They are loyal to capitalism no more than socialism no more than communism. Their only faith is in the sufficiency of their own human actions.