The words universe and atom originally had very specific abstract meanings. Universe referred to “everything that exists” while atom referred to the “smallest indivisible constituent of matter” (from the Greek philosophy of Atomism).  Over time these abstractions became concrete in their meanings.

As the science of physics progressed people came to have assumptions as to how big the universe or the atom would prove to be. When they thought this limit was reached, they began using the abstraction to express the concrete. Of course, science proved those limits to be wrong; today, an atom refers to a concrete piece of matter that is hardly the smallest, and universe has come to refer to an object which is “expanding” and therefore can hardly include all of existence. The word universe has even spawned terms such as “multiverse” or “parallel universe” which are clearly in contradiction with the original abstraction.

The best way to keep these equivocations clear is to ask yourself this question whenever they appear in an argument: does this person intend to express an abstraction or a concrete “real-world” object? You may find that the person making the argument isn’t clear on it himself.

Recently I wrote a quick post about the FDA in relation to a TV show on Animal Planet called I’m Alive. I received a couple of comments, but one of them requires a little more explanation so I’ve decided to answer it as a post.

First, the title of that article is “Yet another example of why the FDA ought to be abolished” and it is really yet another. It is certainly not the most compelling. Government agencies like the FDA violate ethical and political theory and as a consequence they result in negative outcomes. Understanding theory requires time and effort so it is generally these consequences that get people’s attention. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that they are consequences, i.e., concretes, where the argument requires abstraction.

A thorough discussion of the ideal in government is really a subject for a book. It requires strictly defining terms and discussing why central planning in general is unethical. In this post, though, I might be able to elucidate a bit for those who are new to the subject by revealing the true purpose of an agency like the FDA.

Any government agency has two purposes, an ostensible purpose, the one that the people buy into, and the real purpose, the one that those in control want to achieve. (See my post A Spoonful of Sugar for more on this). Let’s just take the FDA, DEA and USDA as examples (you can do this with pretty much any government agency and rather than repeat myself, I’ll let you do some of that. Go ahead and post some in the comments section if you like.)

As you can see, government is particularly useful for preventing business competition. If you doubt this is the real purpose of these agencies, below is a list of books which will teach you a little about the history of government interference with the market economy.

I will elaborate a bit on the arguments the people generally believe (it is these beliefs that a discussion of ideal government would dispel). For those who worry about “snake oil salesman” it is important to note that there already exists within a proper system of justice protection from them – it is the law against fraud.

Now some may argue that the law against fraud is not enough because it doesn’t protect people before the crime. But no legitimate law can punish crime before it happens. The law serves to protect people by making an example of those who commit crime. In fact, protecting people from making mistakes leads over time to a population that is particularly vulnerable to such mistakes and this of course plays right into the hands of the real snake-oil salesman – the one who wrests control of the apparatus of government. An analogous situation might be the infant whose immune system remains unchallenged. He never builds up an immunity to disease while he is young and so remains particularly vulnerable.

Now, do these agencies sometimes do what people think they are supposed to do? Yes, sometimes they are successful in preventing a dangerous drug from making it to the market – after all, not everyone working as a cog in the wheel is aware of the real reason the agency exists – some people actually believe they are working for the benefit of individuals. But it’s important to realize that this function can be served in better ways – ways that do not impact the freedom of individuals to behave ethically and therefore do not have the negative consequences associated with these agencies.

I hope this clarifies somewhat my position on the FDA. For those who wish to do some studying on their own I highly recommend the following books.

The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton Folsom (good for beginner)
The Case Against the Fed by Murray Rothbard
The Law by Frederick Bastiat
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand (ethical theory)

On the path to enlightenment there are a lot of people who, for whatever reason, want to keep you from the truth and they have a few ingenious techniques for doing so. One of these goes like this:

Present a little bit of truth along with a lot of falsehood and the truth will easily be ignored.

Present a little bit of falsehood along with a lot of truth and the falsehood will easily be accepted.

A spoonful of sugar…

An example of something like this would be to combine the true history of an elite banker class with the absurd notion that the world’s political leaders are not really human beings, but are a species of reptilian alien. See how beautifully that works? If a single person is spouting both of those ideas, you will likely imagine that you can safely ignore both. This device relegates all discussion regarding the elites and their plans for a New World Order to the New Age section in the bookstore, where everything is assumed to be pseudoscience and no self-respecting college graduate would be caught dead.

A very similar method is used in the development of political parties. It goes like this:

Package a position on issues of emotional importance to the common man, but of little political importance, with the politically important, but likely to be ignored, doctrine that you wish to bring to pass.

Package the opposite position on those emotional issues of importance to the common man, but of little political importance, with the VERY SAME politically important, but likely to be ignored, doctrine that you wish to bring to pass.

Pit these two against one another and you will pass the doctrine you wish to pass with the blessings of the masses.

Examples of this would be the abortion issue, the gay marriage issue and of course the ever-present ”science” of global warming, which, fraught as it is with so much nonsense, is easily swallowed by those who attach to it all the truths that science has ever uncovered.

Together the principles are part of a kind of dialectic which is really just a fuzzy equivocal term (another important technique for confusing people) for the fallacy of false alternative. These are, among others, some of the tools used by the “sagacious lawgiver” to ensure his particular rules will be followed. Speaking of equivocation, which I discussed in a previous post, if you are going to use the above techniques, make sure that whatever doctrine you wish to pass is named using words that evoke positive emotions, but mean precisely the opposite of whatever you are doing. This gets people used to using these words in conjunction with your ideas and prevents anyone from using them with their true meanings. You know, freedom is slavery, war is peace, and liberals are people who want more government (and hence less freedom).

With these techniques in mind, you’re well on your way to despotism.

Doublespeak is a type of logical fallacy known as equivocation. Equivocation is the use in a logical argument of a word that has two or more distinct meanings. The purpose of using Doublespeak is to evade real debate by confusing or obfuscating.

In any spoken language, words naturally change over time, either in form or in meaning, as the concepts of the people speaking it change. For example, the word “gay” once meant “happy” but today it is used to mean a person who is homosexual. Those who employ Doublespeak, however, are looking to force this change. Because words are automatically associated and do not need to be redefined with each use, the aspiring political activist can use them against an unsuspecting individual. He or she will use a word that people associate positively and which evokes a positive emotion to describe his or her own motives or plans, whether or not these words REALLY describe them.

People usually have no problem keeping two meanings for a single word straight. The reason they can do it is because they have the word in a context. For example, if I use the word “light” to describe a feather, you will probably assume I mean “not heavy.” If I use the word “light” to describe the color of the wall, you will probably assume I mean “pale.” Political activists can change the meaning of a word easily by simply removing contextual information, so that all that is left is the positive emotion. (Ayn Rand calls this context-dropping by the way.) Here are a few examples:

Freedom (from what?)

Liberal (about what?)

Conservative (about what?)

Left (of what?)

Right (of what?)

Missing contextual cues can lead to a lot of equivocations, but many words also have two meanings because one of the meanings is normative, i.e., deals with what OUGHT to be versus what IS. This is especially prevalent in the area of politics because there are two distinct meanings of the word “law” and therefore all the words that pertain to law, like crime for instance.

Law (as it is legislated)

Law (as it OUGHT to be – this is normative.)

Then of course some Doublespeak words are simply changed outright over time so that the past meaning – which some older people will still be using – and the current meaning – the one taught to children – will be different. Anyone who has looked into the history of political party affiliations has no doubt been confused as to what the meaning of Democrat or Republican was at any given time. Words like these are worse yet because they often have no definition at all, they are simply a list of beliefs which may or may not be consistent. (Ludwig von Mises calls this an ideal type, by the way.)

The important thing when dealing with Doublespeak is to simply ask yourself what the definitions of key words are and try to define them. This will usually expose a manipulator or evader for what he is.

In this new series – Beginner’s Doublespeak – I will periodically be exposing a Doublespeak word. If you come across them in your readings, by all means please comment, either here or in any Beginner’s Doublespeak post and expose them.