February 17, 2005
As a gesture of thanks for technical help from the languagelog folks, here's a tidbit that might be fodder for their linguistic enterprises.
A much-quoted recent article by Kurt Anderson in New York Magazine, When Good News Feels Bad, is remarkably candid about the current dilemma faced by those resolutely opposed on principle to President Bush's policies since 9/11:
Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush's risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads,but here we are nonetheless.
At Good&Happy, we too have principles, including ready admiration and sympathy with anyone taking a new, non-ideological look at "where it is right to be now, in line with our principles."
In fact, we feel so friendly toward Mr. Anderson that we want to play language games with him:
A Hobbesian choice?! How on earth can Hobbes, author of Leviathan and other works that intended to show the English the dangers of democracy and demonstrated the need for absolute sovereignty in society, be the reference here?
We think what is meant is a Hobson's Choice, defined as
an apparently free choice that offers no real alternative. [After Thomas Hobson (1544?-1630), English keeper of a livery stable, from his requirement that customers take either the horse nearest the stable door or none.]
In fact, whether or not it is even a technically-accurate use of Hobson's choice, we leave to our professional linguist betters at, yes, languagelog.
We do know that such honest analysis of one's own opinions as Mr. Anderson's is a model of civil discourse, and we'd rent him any horse in our stable. Or offer an evening watching David Lean's charming film, the envoi of which might say that making the best of a difficult bargain can carry fine and humane rewards.
Update: We welcome and acknowledge the languagelog explication of all this. Not the first appearance of Hobbes in such a context, we learn.
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