Posted by Eugene Volokh:
-Based:
A [1]Slate article by Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large of the Oxford
English Dictionary reports this about a meeting of linguists:
The suffix -based, as in faith-based or reality-based, was widely
disliked. "It's its own opposite," said Bill Kretzschmar, editor of
the Linguistic Atlas of America. "If it's reality-based, it's not
real."
But that doesn't seem quite right to me.
1. As I understand it, "faith-based" is most commonly used to discuss
"faith-based initiatives" which really refer to faith-based social
service programs and groups. A faith-based program for recovering
alcoholics is something that's aimed at using religion to help people
overcome alcoholism: The technique is based on faith, though its goal
is to achieve a good result (and a result that has important secular
effects). Likewise for faith-based programs for fighting unwed
pregnancy and the like. We might also talk of "faith-based
decisionmaking," which would be decisionmaking that's based in
important ways on your religious commitments.
We wouldn't say "If it's faith-based, it's not faith," partly because
"faith-based" is an adjective and "faith" is a noun. We wouldn't say
"If it's faith-based, it's not about faith," because that would be
wrong. And we wouldn't say "If it's faith-based, it's not religious
worship," because that's beside the point: Faith-based programs aren't
supposed to be religious worship for its own sake, but programs that
use participants' faith as a means to achieve goals that are also the
goals of other secular programs.
2. "Reality-based," as I understand it, has two meanings. One is in
the phrase "reality-based [television] programming" or "reality-based
shows," such as Survivor and the like. Here, it's true that
"reality-based" isn't quite "real," but it's also beside the point.
"Reality-based" conveys well the fact that these shows are unscripted
and involve participants' own real reactions to certain stimuli (not
just what the writers told actors to say); but at the same time the
stimuli are indeed crafted by the producers of the show, so the
program really isn't real.
The second, which emerged in late 2004, is exemplified by the term
"reality-based community," which people usually (though not always)
use to refer to themselves and their allies as people whose thinking
is rooted in reality (usually as opposed to faith, or to folly). Here
are the two earliest uses of these meanings that I could find on
NEXIS, both from Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty: George
W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill.:
1. CNN, Oct. 15, 2004: "What we found, and what I found over, really,
years of investigating and reporting on George Bush, is a steady
progression. He has retreated step by step from the kind of
critical analysis upon which presidents have always relied, and
ever more embraced faith at the core of his decision-making
process. This is something that--I talked to Republicans in this
story, and some of them are quite mightily concerned about: Is the
president dealing with reality-based issues or is he ever more
guided by the faith-based certainties? . . . [T]here will be a
civil war in the Republican Party on November 3rd if George Bush
wins between the reality-based community and the faith-based
community."
2. N.Y. Times, Oct. 17, 2004: "In the summer of 2002, after I had
written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like
about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a
meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White
House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the
time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to
the very heart of the Bush presidency.
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the
reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe
that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment
principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the
world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now,
and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act
again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and
that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and
you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
Note, of course, that the term is used differently in these two
quotes: In the first, it's used as a normatively positive antonym to
"faith-based." In the second, it's used as a pejorative for "tied too
much to current reality, and lacking an understanding of how the
reality can and will be transformed." But my sense from looking at
subsequent uses is that the second, subtler, negative usage (which did
mean "not real" in the sense of "not the way the world really works
anymore") has been swamped by the first, simpler, positive usage. And
in this positive usage, "reality-based" is close to "real"; it does
mean "based on what we see as reality, not based on your unproven,
unprovable faith / myth."
Now maybe I'm missing something here -- but if I'm right, then this
suggests that the criticism of "faith-based" is certainly misplaced,
and of "reality-based" is mostly misplaced. Thanks to [2]InstaPundit
for the pointer.
References
1. http://slate.msn.com/id/2112150/
2. http://instapundit.com/archives/020443.php
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