Perhaps the Newspaper of Record’s partial retraction was too hasty…

Victorian-era social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer adopted evolutionary theory to justify colonialism and imperialism, opposition to labor unions and the withdrawal of aid to the sick and needy.

There’s a little-known and rarely-observed rule of English grammar to the effect that “like” excludes and “such as” includes. So, for example, if I were to say “university towns such as Auburn have good used bookstores,” I am thereby stating that Auburn (inter alia) has a good used bookstore. But if I were to say “university towns like Auburn usually have Indian restaurants,” I am not saying anything about Auburn, but rather saying something about other university towns, which resemble Auburn in some salient respect.

So if the Times had a good grammar-stickler on hand, they could insist that when they say that “Victorian-era Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer” supported imperialism, opposed labor unions, etc., they have not said anything at all about what Herbert Spencer believed; they only said something about what other Victorian-era Social Darwinists, Herbert Spencer not included, believed. After all, they didn’t say that “Victorian-era Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer” did those nasty things.

On the other hand, “can” does not always imply “ought.”

Seriously, though, good work, and congratulations.

bfp: “maybe i should speak spanish instead?”

No, no, you don’t understand! She’s not bigoted against Spanish-speaking immigrants. She’s actually objecting to the influx of undocumented immigrants in her neighborhood speaking Classical Nahuatl.

Now that that’s all been cleared up, I’m off to march openly and defiantly against the continents of North and South America.

I notice that several videos of Ron Paul’s answers have been uploaded to YouTube. (Cf. for example [1].) I also note that none of the edits I’ve seen so far include Paul’s support for forced pregnancy. I wonder why that is, and what that tells us about the Paul apparatchiks.

HoldOn: “The zip code 07675 covers three different towns in NJ: Westwood, River Vale and Old Tappan. So there’s not always a 1:1 mapping between zip and city/town. More info is required…”

Well, so why not take the ZIP code alone, and then present a menu of options only when the ZIP code actually does map to more than one city name? The existence of ambiguous cases isn’t a good reason to require unneeded input in the unambiguous cases.

Kevin,

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this is a wonderful post. Kudos. I just wish that I had more to add.

Iaian: If a government did that, you would hope the right-“libertarian” would oppose it (unlike, say, von Mises and his support for fascism in the 1920s).

This is a libel against Mises. Ludwig von Mises had plenty of problems, but “support for fascism in the 1920s” was not among them, unless you consider explicit attacks on fascism to count as “support” for it. If you are (as I suspect) referring to his remarks in Ch. 1, § 10 of Liberalism (1927), then you had better note that the chapter explicitly condemns the assault on freedom of speech and association by the fascists, as well as the policy of jailing and murdering political opponents: “The fundamental idea of these movements—which, from the name of the most grandiose and tightly disciplined among them, the Italian, may, in general, be designated as Fascist—consists in the proposal to make use of the same unscrupulous methods in the struggle against the Third International as the latter employs against its opponents. The Third International seeks to exterminate its adversaries and their ideas in the same way that the hygienist strives to exterminate a pestilential bacillus; it considers itself in no way bound by the terms of any compact that it may conclude with opponents, and it deems any crime, any lie, and any calumny permissible in carrying on its struggle. The Fascists, at least in principle, profess the same intentions. . . . . Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. . . . So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.”

In the same section, Mises made a couple of embarrassing mistakes about fascism. First, he suggested that fascism would likely moderate with time and become less rapacious as it settled into power; that first error led him into the second error of supposing that fascism was a lesser evil than Stalinism. But in a chapter that directly and unequivocally condemns the Fascists’ repressive policies, states that Fascist anti-Communism (the only “merit” he can find in Fascism at all) is ultimately doomed to failure, and closes by saying that Fascist militarism “cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization,” the claim that Ludwig von Mises — whose apartment, library, and papers in Vienna were targeted and seized by the Gestapo ten years later while he sought refuge in Switzerland — “supported” fascism, is both unfounded and irresponsible.

Better yet, how about:

0. Go to the SF Food Bank’s website and donating, say, $15.85 to the Food Bank, or better yet starting a monthly giving program (say, $10/month). Encourage your friends to do the same.

That’s what I did. Then I skipped steps 1-3 entirely.

Because now, no matter what the pols in Congress end up agreeing on, the Food Bank will still have my part of that money in the bank. If everyone puts their time into begging for busy Congress types to remember the line item for one city’s food bank in a massive annual budget that’s perpetually running huge deficits, then you’re going to hear about this same funding crisis every year when the Feds once again consider cutting funding. On the other hand, if the people themselves are funding these programs, instead of trying to finagle the government into doing it for them, the base of support will be much more stable, and much more resilient, since it won’t depend on the ever-shifting whims of a very small group of powerful people.