At 03:57 PM 4/25/2005 -0700, Dave Land wrote:
>Your question reminds me that the metaphors we choose have power. The
>president's use of the phrase "permission slip" in the state of the
>union address was carefully chosen to call up visions of the United
>States as a child, having to go begging some adult nation for a kind of
>"hall pass." That vision was intended to be so repulsive that to suggest
>that the US must seriously consider the opinions of other nations before
>acting was to reduce our great nation to childishness.
Absolutely and utterly wrong, Dave.
You are conflating two separate things:
a) "serious consideration of the opinions of other nations before
acting"
and b) "agreement from other nations before acting"
The problem, Dave, is that many people in general, and you and Nick in
specific, use the phrase "serious consideration of the opinions of other
nations before acting" while actually meaning "agreement from other nations
before acting". President Bush chose to analogy to emphasis that he is
*not* opposed to *a)* so long as *a)* does not mean *b)*. Indeed, the
analogy emphasizes that if *a)* truly does not mean *b)*, then there must
exist at least some set of cases in which the US will act _after *a)*, but
_without_ *b)*.
That's the real reasoning behind the analogy, not the caricature you
represented.
JDG
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