Comments on: Do You Feel Especially Governmenty?

By: Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Neil the Ethical Werewolf — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:28:05 +0000

Ah, thanks for OEDing this up, Anonymous.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:28:18 +0000

Mike-
The argument as you summarize it is naive to the point of absurdity, and not the sort of thing I find it credible that any adult sincerely believes.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:23:37 +0000

Neil the Ethical Werewolf: Looking at the Oxford English Dictionary it seems like you’re more or less right.

Pap originally had a meaning of a sort of bland mushy food (such as for babies), and eventually took on the meaning of things that were metaphorically bland and mushy, and then outside of a certain South African porridge the original meaning mostly died out and the metaphorical meaning survived on its own.

Apparently pap as in pap smear is unrelated: it’s short for Georgios Papanikolaou, the inventor of the Pap smear.

By: Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Neil the Ethical Werewolf — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:20:51 +0000

I’ve seen you use the word ‘pap’ to describe insipid writing a couple times recently. I’ve heard the term before, of course, but I’m wondering — is it a metaphor where this is the sort of thing that I’m supposed to imagine? Or is it just a general word for painfully empty writing? I hope I’m not supposed to think of a pap smear.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:20:10 +0000

Assuming I understand the author’s point, or else just advancing my own, I believe that you have unfairly extended his argument far past where it is meant to end. The argument is simply that the government is not alien to us; rather it is us. The people who perform the roles in our government come from nowhere but our citizenry, and they never become anything but citizens empowered under a Constitution and laws also passed and enforced by citizens on other citizens. This is in contrast to a monarchy, where differing classes of person exist as a matter of law: ruler and subject.

None of this confers any necessary blessing on the particular actions what of the citizens in government to — that still may be wise or unwise, legitimate or illegitimate, legal or illegal as the facts, context, and law dictate.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:30:38 +0000

Well…I think most of the point is that this is a cute rhetorical flourish. That is, the author isn’t trying to stake some deep claim about the ideal role or form of government. Rather, he’s just pushing back against an equally vapid and rote critique of government as endlessly malign or incompetent. I just skimmed the article (it isn’t really to my taste), but it seems pretty clear that the author is operating at the level of rhetoric; for example, he plays with various Reagan quotes.

Obviously liberals don’t, in general, think that everything the government does is awesome. Rather, they’re annoyed at the massive status quo bias embedded in the assumption that nothing the government does is good.