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Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who's the fairest one of all?
Answer: A five-person majority on the Supreme Court, of course.
The answer to your question is, quite simply: when the courts tell us it's time for a change. Scalia may be a bit of a trog, but he's no fool, either. He thinks that a strict constructionist has the best chance of succeeding Renquist, which in the current state of our Union is probably true. And strict constructionists are, by their very nature, less amenable to the sort of reconstruction that the majority (or perhaps plurality would be a better term) on the court undertook with this landmark decision.
I'm not interested in getting into a political argument in this forum (I don't live ALL that far from Ms. Jackie, yunnerstand), but your question bears answering since it's an important one not only for our government but for the world as well, since, like it or not, our government holds great sway in the way the nations of the world work together or, sadly, fight with one another.
So please, people, let's keep the discussion narrowly focused here.
In its history, the Supreme Court has been very slow at overturning itself, and this recent trend certainly seems to signal that this conservative approach to stare decisis may be on the verge of a complete rethinking by the court.
An example of the other side of that same coin is the case of the two former CIA spies who were promised lifetiem income from the CIA in return for their spying for our country. The CIA reneged on its promise and the spies sued, only to have their case thrown out because spies don't have standing to sue in cases such as this, since to allow the case to go forward could conceivably damage national security. This is based on a case broght by one of Lincoln's personally recruited spies, whose pension was stopped after Lincoln's murder. The Supreme Court ruled that allowing the suit to go into court would breach a secrecy oath undertaken by the President, and that decision was used this week to throw out the case against the CIA.
Even though the potential plaintiffs argued (and I thought fairly convincingly) that it was possible to prosecute the case without revealing any secrets, the Court held that their decision from hmmm sometime in the 1870s or 80s, I expect, would be allowed to control.
It will be interesting to see what happens when, as it must, the court considers gay marriages, since the conservatives will be able to point to this decision and say that emerging community standards forbid gay marriages. Should be quite a tapdance for the court should it choose to allow gay marriages in a test between the 8th and 14th amendments.
TEd
TEd
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Fair enough, but first we should agree on the fundamentals of that of which we talk.
Language is...
1. a communication system of human culture that allows information to be interchanged that is pertinent to the survival of the breeding group.
2. Words have no absolute meanings and are in a constant state of transition.
3. Language is a function of evolution and cares only for cultural truths.
4. Some languages are better than others.
5. Words serve mainly as cultural adhesives to bring common purpose to the individuals of the breeding groups.
Agreed?
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Carpal Tunnel
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4. Some languages are better than others.
Move to amend:
4. Some languages are better than others for certain purposes.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Somewhere or other I used the word aggravate, intending it to be the equivalent of irritate (as in, I was aggravated by how long I had to wait). I was informed that aggravate means 'to make worse', which wouldn't apply to my usage, barring an assumption about my mood prior to having to wait!
Does anyone else use aggravate meaning irritate? I am wondering whether aggravate might have formerly had just the one meaning, but if the usage in my sense is common, has slowly acquired a second? And if so, is it valid?
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Bill asked me something about this, so I thought I might as well post here roughly what I said to him. What interested me here was nothing to do with the politics – read the words I actually posted, people, don’t make assumptions or WAGs about what you may believe I think. I don’t much like Scalia’s view of the world, but I respect his ability to use language.
I wanted to pursue the idea that language could be viewed as something like a stream – not of fixed meaning and immutable but fluid and always changing. I think we all freely recognise this about specific words – take the way the meaning of ‘nice’ has flip-flopped for example – but it then gets really interesting when you apply the same logic to a complete text. If we know the individual constituents of the sentences can change their connotations and also eventually their denotative meaning over time, it must follow that the meaning of complete sentences can and will change in the light of our experience over time.
Yet this must at some point conflict with our need for some degree of fixed ‘reality’, and perhaps this comes into sharpest relief in the arenas of law or moral expressions. After all, our day to day experience is based on the assumption that the law passed yesterday by congress is understood to mean ‘x’ today and will still mean ‘x’ tomorrow. This case brought home to me the fact that actually there is bound to be a growing tension over time, so the only real issue is where the boundary lies, as questioned by Scalia. So I thought it would be interesting to see what everyone else thought about the language issue.
I agree with your first two propositions, Mr Milum. I don’t agree with your third, unless by evolution you only mean change rather than the frequent connotation of ‘change for the better’, and I am unsure what you mean by a cultural truth. I agree with F’s revision for #4. I disagree with your #5 – it seems to me that the ways in which language are used are far more diverse than the role you are trying to assign to it. Some of these functions are about social coherence, and some are about social exclusion; some of them are about defining common purposes and some are about defining individual identity as separate from group identity completely.
TEd, I'm not at all clear where you're coming from - you ask us to keep the focus, then talk at some length abut matters that have absolutely no direct bearing on the thread's original topic.
Finally, may I respectfully suggest that separate queries about words could be more usefully taken to a new thread? Pursuing two or more simultaneous conversations is likely to make it even more chaotic than normal around here... ;)
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mav, i don't quite agree with Milo's #5 either, but..
i think he has an import point.
there are subset (special vocabularies) that are used to segrigate groups.
put any group together with a common interest, they will talk about there concerns--and use a special vocubulary.
be it rocket scientist, or rock stars!
jargon, argot, slang, call it what you will, we share language, and we hoard language.
we use it as tool to unite, and seperate.
From the smallest of groups, twins who make up their own 'languge' to commonwealths like the old UK that span the globe, language is a cultural force for both uniting and dividing.
i think point 5 is very important, and has been a topic in many threads(in many different ways.)
at times we focus on the unity language brings and times we focus on 'seperate' vocabularies used to differentciate groups, and sometimes we focus on how sometimes specific vocabularies evolve (out of geography, or other seperations) and wonder how this will effect the unity language provides. (ie, UK vs US english, (or UK vs. NZ english, or any flavor of english vs. any other)
We all know French and Italian and Spanish, started as latin, and now are seperate languages..
We all like our personal freedom to add to the lexis, but i think we would be sad to learn that in 1000 years, American was as different as English as Spanish is from French.
(Spanish in the new world is having that problem.. spanish speakers from all over the world mix here in NY--and they don't always understand each other.. (something a kin to taking an average texan, and dumping him into a farm community in say, Yorkshire.. --he might understand the words, but the local idioms and vocabulary would leave him in the dark about meaning! (and the same would happen to the Yorkshire farmer--he would be at loss in texas!)
in either case, they might only undertand a third to half of what was said!
hispanic's (i mean this word to indicate people who live in the english speaking world, but learn spanish as a first language) from cuba and puerto rico have different vocabularies..(as island populations often do) but they share a very similar environment.. cubans, or PR's, when talking to peruvians, or filopino's, or other hispanics from far flung geographical places often find the language they speak is different enough to much almost mutually uninteligible.
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Yeah Maverick, I've yet to understand how Doc Bill can read all the posts that we all make here on Awad but due to his fraility he can only respond through proxy? Strange man that Doc Bill.  I left the house 45 minutes ago with plans to respond to Faldage's comment when I got downtown, but 45 minutes is seven lifetimes here on Awad and since then the discussion here has unbraided a bit, but I will try to catch up. Faldage; I will second your abridgement of my generality and I will gladly enter your name for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court if you will promise not to prune my rose bushes. I fear your nit-pick pruning would leave only a nub. Maverick; Yes. yes, yes, I promise to stick to the opening proposition. Having a focal point for the diverse beliefs and ideas of our motley group is our only hope for salvation.  Doc Bill; You don't want generalities? You want specifics? Ok here is a specific legal word that has changed through time... welfare (U.S. Constitution) the commonweal. welfare (current usage) government aid for needy people. I have more, Bill, and I will be back! OK. Now that these loose ends have been properly attended I will address the more pertinent points of the discussion with a much less rambling post in a very few short minutes. Thank you.
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To what extent does our use of language have a fixed and certain meaning?
Disagreement of terms: the meaning of the term "language". In particular " 4. Some languages are better than others."Ok I'll admit, Faldage and Maverick, I intentionally phrased that sentence to incite.  I get my kicks inciting my debatable betters, but mainly I wanted to give an example of semantic controls over meaning. A process that was once known far and wide as ->"logic"<-. Please follow the sequence... Some languages are better than other languages. (1)The fact that "languages" is plural dictates that languages are different from each other otherwise all languages would be the same. (2) These "differences" can be said to be better or worse depending on the criteria used in the determination. (3) If we agree that words have only an evolutionary function, then the "better" or "worse" value can be determined by a gauge of the degree of relative fulfillment of evolutionary function. Hey, words are easy, just follow the niches that language gives that allows us to make good sense. ______________________________________________________________________________________
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themilum: I haven't been following this thread up until now, but may I ask if you see Anu's discussion of his AWAD presentism - see below - as relevant to this discussion?
And, if Anu's discussion of "presentism" is relevant, is it possible that different high-minded thinkers could have an honest disagreement about something as fundamental as the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court because, although all of the Justices live in the same era, they are not necessarily breathing the same era?
I'm asking a question, not expressing an opinion, themilum, because I don't know enough about the case and the majority and dissenting opinions.
BTW you are a red state kinda guy, themilum, and you are multivastly outnumbered in this forum by blue state coastal types. In my opinion, this is good reason to give your views on subjects like this more latitude, rather than less, as a matter of principle, not politics.
How a majority treats a minority opinion on any given subject says more about the majority than its opinion on that subject.
presentism (PREZ-uhn-tiz-uhm) noun
Evaluating past events and people by present-day values.
[From English present, from Middle English, from Old French, from Latin praesent- (stem of praesens), from present participle of praeesse (to be present before others), from prae- (pre-) + esse (to be).]
Presentism is the application of current ideals and moral standards to interpret historical figures and their actions. For example, consider Mr. John Teacher who caned pupils in his 1889 class. A presentist would say that Mr. Teacher engaged in unacceptable violence against children while one with an opposing view would claim that since it was considered OK to hit children at the time, Mr. Teacher isn't to be blamed.
Absenteeism isn't an opposite of presentism. Rather, it refers to chronic absence, e.g. from work or school. Another sense of the term presentism is the idea that the prophesies of Scripture (especially of the Apocalypse) are now being fulfilled.
"In apocalyptic style, he (Jonathan Clark) says that presentism 'reaches back into the past to silence its message'." Stephen Howe; Fade to Blue; Independent (London, UK); Jul 12, 2003.
"Presentism is very often advanced in defense of America's founders. It is comforting to think that their generation, so distant in time from us, lived in a condition of moral ignorance, and thus innocence, regarding slavery. But that is not the case. Even Thomas Jefferson, some of whose
statements exhibit an almost demented racism, could see clearly that slavery utterly compromised the nation: 'I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.'" Henry Wiencek; Yale and the Price of Slavery; The New York Times; Aug 18, 2001.
per Anu
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Uh, Plutarch,I've...uh, kinda inherited this thread by default because the other crap shooters who once posted here have stopped posting and moved on to matters more worthy of their uh...personage, and so now, I am, so to speak, the semantic head.
Your choice, I'm afraid, is to play by my rules or else I will stop posting and your own echo will become your counterpoint.
But what good luck! My rules are simple. All I ask is for you to be polite and focus your sharp mind on the important subject of this thread. Yes, Anu's discussion of "presentism" is relevant but the horse of the matter is whether or not words, by their very nature, can lock in meaning between diverse cultures and prevent the adulteration of key words through time.
Admittedly this is a lofty subject and as such it requires that we first investigate the fundamental quirks and oddities of language.
Rail, snarl, and smirk, at what I say here but please offer other ideas rather than cute trite remarks in their place.
Together let us address the propositions at hand as I am here to learn; are not you?
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