LANGUAGE AND LOYALTY
Chase, Stuart
Language and Loyalty By Stuart Chase WITH the highly publicized investigations into the loyalty of Americans, the term "guilt-by-association" is becoming increasingly familiar. Unfortunately, not...
...She said further that her maid was a Negro...
...Here is one on a more personal level, but equally vicious: My grocer has cheated me...
...It is, you see, entirely a matter of words, and has nothing to do with physical association...
...Better yet, would be to recognize and renounce a logic which no self-respecting barnyard fowl would have any part of...
...But they miss the real point...
...and her mouth set in a straight line...
...Therefore, it is treasonable to argue for pointed lightning rods...
...An economic analyst whose counsel has been sought by management, labor, and government, Stuart Chase is best known to the nation for such books as "An Economy of Abundance" and "The Tyranny of Words...
...Furthermore, no two human beings, even Siamese twins, have identical characteristics...
...Communists oppose Chiang...
...Thus: The Pope advocates minimum wages...
...She said that her maid was untrustworthy...
...Only humans have developed language, and only humans can befuddle and hurt themselves with its abuse...
...Westbrook Pegler, in one of his columns in 1949, furnished us with a genuine museum piece...
...Felix Frankfurter was prominent in the New Deal...
...The device is an old one...
...Taft is in favor of government housing...
...A cousin ot mine produced a typical case...
...Alger Hiss was a protege of Frankfurter...
...A and B are practically identical...
...Therefore, the State Department is run by Communists...
...And all the hundreds of decent, loyal American citizens who have been branded traitors and Communists by this verbal trick, do not smile...
...Franklin favors pointed lightning rods...
...Therefore the Pope is a Communist, or: Therefore, Stalin is a Catholic...
...This argument was actually used by embittered members of the real estate lobby...
...People are tall, short, medium, blond, brunette, male, female, radical, conservative, Catholic, Jew, American, Negro, white, Mexican, fat, lean, quick-tempered, literate, illiterate, and so on, indefinitely...
...The text has here been expanded to include additional examples from Chase's newest book, "Roads to Agreement...
...Franklin is a rebel and a traitor...
...Therefore, Senator Taft is a Communist...
...Every person has many characteristics...
...Some, indeed, have committed suicide...
...B is never the exact counterpart of A. The trick is to find a characteristic of A which is also a characteristic of B. As both A and B have literally tens of thousands of characteristics, a few are bound to be similar...
...Thus stated, we smile at guilt-by-verbal association...
...Roosevelt is on trial for perjury—"in a figurative sense...
...Sally has a brown skin...
...But Senator Taft did not smile...
...The State Department opposes Chiang...
...Therefore, all Yankees are cheats...
...He said: "Although of course there is no charge of perjury against Mrs...
...Once grasped, no honest mind would ever again credit any "proof" based upon it...
...The theory behind guilt-by-verbal-association is simple...
...Communists study Russian...
...Unfortunately, not everybody understands what it means...
...The normal processes of human communication, human knowledge, to say nothing of human decency and consideration, cease to function...
...Deal began...
...Therefore, Mrs...
...The next step is a towering logical leap: Because a single characteristic is possessed by each, therefore all characteristics are interchangeable...
...Roosevelt was married to Mr...
...Stalin advocates minimum wages...
...He cited the Pegler column and went on: "And Westbrook Pegler is a Communist because he played poker with Hey-wood Broun who was called a Communist by Martin Dies...
...A man is known by the groups he frequents, and if they are second-story men, we are quite justified in locking the windows...
...Uncounted citizens have fallen for the above syllogism...
...Roosevelt inaugurated the New Deal...
...McCarthy studied Russian (according to Marquis Childs...
...The editor of the New York Post punctured this one with a semantic needle a few days later...
...T here fore, McCarthy is a Communist...
...The King urged the Royal Society in London to rescind its resolution in favor of points, on the ground that Franklin was a leader of the insurgent American colonists and so a traitor...
...Here is what happened in the regions above her mouth: Sally is not dependable as a maid...
...A more accurate term would be "guilt-by-perfoal-association," for the trouble is primarily word trouble, not physical association...
...After Benjamin Franklin discovered the principle of the lightning rod, there was much heated argument whether sharp points or round knobs were better conductors...
...I therefore propose a change in the phrasing...
...My grocer is a Yankee...
...With this logical blunderbuss, one can "prove" anybody to be anything...
...His bill was finally passed, you remember...
...It can work either way, but usually, as in Gresham's Law, the direction is degenerative...
...McCarthy's tactics and techniques in the June, 1950, issue of The Progressive, prepared the material in this article as an editorial for the Wichita Beacon, which carried it recently...
...I have seen letters in the newspapers from angry gentlemen declaring that of course a person is known by the company he keeps, and only agents of Moscow would question the validity of guilt-by-association...
...Presently, if accusations of this kind spread widely enough, democratic society would become unworkable...
...Roosevelt...
...The angry letter-writers have a point...
...Sen...
...What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander...
...Roosevelt in the Hiss case, she is co-defendant in a figurative sense because Hiss is a protege of Felix Frankfurter who has been a power behind the throne ever since the New STUART CHASE, who first analyzed Sen...
...Let us unwrap this masterpiece: Mrs...
...Hiss is on trial for perjury...
...You can't trust one of them, not one...
...Here is a specific and notorious example, put in the form of a syllogism to sharpen the logic: Communists are in favor of government housing...
...It is the standard bludgeon of what we now call "McCarthyism...
...Therefore, all people with brown skin are undependable...
...Franklin favored points, but George III belonged to the knob school...
Vol. 15 • October 1951 • No. 10
