June 9, 2005

The Trouble with Shorthand
Everett

There have been quite a lot of ruffled feathers around here over the past week or so arising from some rhetorical irresponsibility and a lack of clarity as to the meaning implied by the use of various terms.

The first source of angst is a confusion over the meaning of the prefix anti. Anti means not hatred, but opposition. While the former implies the latter, the latter does not imply the former. Let's look at the following:

If Annatar hates Elves, then Annatar is anti-Elf.

If Annatar is anti-Elf, then Annatar hates Elves.

The reason the first statement holds up and not the second is that while hatred may be a basis for opposition, it is not the only basis for it. Let's take a real-world example here. The Detroit Pistons are playing the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals, and I am a Detroit Pistons fan. Naturally, I want the Pistons to win, which means I want the Spurs to lose. For the next couple of weeks, I will be very much anti-San Antonio Spurs, not because I hate San Antonio, far from it (I'd probably be rooting for them if the Pistons had lost to the Maimi Heat.), but because their objective of winning the NBA Championship is in direct opposition to Detroit Pistons objective of winning the NBA Championship.

A similar situation underlies my anti-French sentiment, and this is where I need to make up for my rhetorical irresponsibility. I had made the assumption that throwing out the term anti-French without adequate context would be acceptable because everyone would know what I meant (I suspect Faerlas did this as well.).

It is an unfortunate fact that the reason the French government acts in open opposition to American interests is that such oppposition is popular with the French people by and large. During the recent ebate over the ratification of the EU Constitution, each side appealed to anti-American sentiment to make its case. The "oui" side said that the constitution should be raitfied so as to allow Europe to act as a balance to American power (Jean Pierre Raffarin, the former French Prime Minister, came right out and said the constitution should be ratified because it would be bad for the U.S.). The "non" side claimed the constitution would submerge France in a deluge of Anglo-style economic liberalism. Ultimately, I am anti-French in the sense that I oppose the political ends they seeks because they are necessarily opposed to the political ends sought by the United States. What's more, because France has decided as a government and as a people that their interest and glory lies in being a counter to the United States, I am forced to choose between being pro-American and anti-French on the one hand, and being pro-French and anti-American on the other. As an American, I submit that it is my patriotic duty to support the interests of my country even if those interests interfere with the interests of other countries.

Fortunately, as Fr. Richard John Neuhaus said the other day on C-SPAN 2's In Depth, politics is an exercise in the penultimate. It is not the be-all, end-all of our existence, and this means I don't have to possess burning hatred of those who oppose what I consider to be the political good. In the end, all this will pass away and what seemed so pressing will be looked upon as naught. One day, when we look back at this form the hereafter, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.