Year: 2020

I read the Letters to the Editor in the daily paper.  These can be interesting observations, funny anecdotes, elaboration on a news item or political advocacy.  The only limits are those imposed by the editorial staff of the newspaper.   Many letters, however, do follow a specific template.  The writer is usually indignant about some outrage which he/she finds offensive when held up against some value or principle which is assumed to be universally accepted (or at least that which the reader finds so obviously critical that it should be universally accepted).     These letters often take this form:   How can we…

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, the Chilean leftist author Ariel Dorfman commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the election of Salvador Allende to the presidency of Chile.     A brief historical recap:  after years of effort, the Chilean left in 1970 won the presidency in a three-man race between an old-line oligarch, a centrist social democrat and socialist Allende. In such a winner-take-all contest, the margin of victory can be as slim as 34/33/33.  Allende did not do much better. With his opponents evenly split, he garnered 36% of the vote.  As he was not the centrist candidate, two-thirds…

To the detriment of the political discourse, we do not in the common parlance draw the proper distinction between rights and entitlements. The two are distinct and should not be confused.  The perennial public debate over the role of the government in the lives of individuals would be a lot clearer if the distinction between the two were properly drawn and were better understood.  RIGHTS are inherent.   Genuine rights are not granted to persons by king or country and cannot be taken from the individual. This leaves the question of what constitutes a right and who says so.   Some see rights…

In 2014, Scotland had a referendum on secession from the United Kingdom.  The process was an exemplar of democracy.  The country was evenly divided between the proponents and opponents of the schism.  In the end, the Scots voted 55% to 45% to remain part of the UK.  The voter turnout was 85%.  In this election, the issue was clear, the decision straightforward and the significance paramount.  There was only the single question on the ballot.  Choosing whether Scotland was to be an independent country or, alternatively, was to maintain its 300-year old affiliation with its neighbors, was not a decision…

In the simplest case, a single word may be a collective noun. It can refer to people (crowd, team, mob), to animals (herd, bevy, pack), or to things (clump, bunch, batch). These are usually general in nature. You can have a team of cyclists or a team of scientists or a team of oxen. A more elaborate construction refers uniquely to a group of something and takes the form:

a [collective term] of [noun]