From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,soc.men
Subject: Re: Shmamily Values
Date: 4 Sep 92 22:16:59 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <92247.200917RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>, <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:
> 
>          There has recently been an ongoing controversy between Dan  Quayle
>     and Murphy Brown, regarding family values and single mothers.  Now I do
>     not know  if this  is the  FIRST example  of a  dispute between  a real
>     person and a fictional character.  (Some, no doubt, will ask, and WHICH
>     is the fictional character?  But I shall ignore such questions).

They are both fictional characters.  We no more know the real people
behind these public personae than we know the man in the moon.

[deletion]

>          Anyway, it is being contended that talk of family values is just a
>     mask for homo-phobia or hatred of unusual families.  That is why,  even
>     though the Democrats  also HAVE these  family values,  many consider it
>     bad form to TALK  about them.  There is  a similar situation with  "law
>     and order" which is again claimed to be just a mask for racism.   Thus,
>     it is claimed, the famous Horton ad could not POSSIBLY have been an  ad
>     against crime, but MUST have been an ad against black people.

Yep.  What a schtik: everything is "really" code for something else
and the Liberal Democrats have the Key...

>          This is fine and  no doubt the Democrats  are right about this  as
>     they are about everything else.  

I assume this is irony!

>     But we are still left with a  problem.
>     What if someone  wants to ACTUALLY  talk about what  used to be  called
>     family values?  That person cannot use the expression "family  values",
>     because THAT stands for homo-phobia and so on and a person who does NOT
>     hate gays cannot use this expression.  So what IS such a person to do?

>          The solution is to  use a device that  Quine and other have  used,
>     and may have been used  before Quine.  You GIVE the  expression "family
>     values"  to  the  Democrats.   From  now  on it will mean "homo-phobia,
>     hatred of single mothers, etc.  etc."  But you invent a  NEW expression
>     "shmamily values" which  will, from now  on, mean what  "family values"
>     used to mean at one time.  Then we can again talk as we did before.

All very like Alice in Wonderland, isn't it?  But seriously, that *is*
how it works.  When most guitars are electric and rock lead guitar
takes over the meaning of "guitar" we come up with a new term
"acoustic guitar" for just plain guitar.

[deletion]

>          To take  up this  issue just  a bit  more seriously,  It is  quite
>     possible that  Dan Quayle  is not  really serious  when he  talks about
>     family values, and perhaps the Horton ad DID have a racist motive.  But
>     we still do have the problem that there are real issues to talk  about.
>     And if we  impoverish our own  vocabulary for political  reasons - then
>     free speech ceases  to have any  meaning.  We can  make sounds, but  we
>     cannot say what we  WANTED to say by  making such sounds -  because the
>     meaning has been taken away.  Thomas Mann used to complain that  Hitler
>     had ruined the  German language.  It  would be a  pity if this  happens
>     also to English.

I sympathize very much with this.  As long as we *allow* certain
groups to create meaning for us, we will have this problem.  We should
insist on the right to *define our own terms*--we should insist that
this is a crucial part of free speech.  You can only fight ideology
with reason.  A notable triumph over this sort of thing occurred when
the Berlin Wall fell: many German words (such as Konkurrenz,
"competition") had been appropriated by the Communists and given an
evil meaning.  But the wall fell anyway!
********************************** +.............................+
*- Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>* :All opinions expressed herein:
*There is no privileged position.* :are my own and are not to be :
*	-God, Derrida, others    * : attributed to my employer   :
********************************** +.............................+