Right Up My Alley

I almost always still get a Sunday paper, and when I do I always try my hand at the New York Times crossword, which is in the Detroit Free Press every week for some reason. Go figure.

While I only completely finish the thing about three times a year (hey, it's a challenging crossword) last week's offering was right in my wheelhouse, a great big fat pitch down the middle of the plate. The main clues were about logical fallacies. Logic is a subset of philosophy.

I nailed each answer without more prompts than the clues themselves. I even got, on the first pass, the Latin one: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Roughly translated for those of you not familiar with the language of ancient Rome, it means, after, therefore because of. It's the argument that since A occurred before B, A caused B. Here's a solid example: Marty was born in 1960, and civil war broke out in Angola in 1961. Therefore, Marty caused the Angolan Civil War. That's obviously untrue. I think. I mean, I was a year old in 1961. I don't remember doing much of anything.

Anyway, I got them all correct, each and every error of logic, even the No True Scotsman. I knew one day that that minor in philosophy from the University of Detroit would pay off.

Peace and Love

Ah, peace. Let's be for it, shall we?

And in the meantime, let's also be for happiness and sunshine and, and, unicorns. Yes, unicorns, because it all makes about as much sense, doesn't it?

Aren't we all for peace? Happiness? Sunshine? Of course; but then all those bugbears get in the way, don't they? All those nasty facts such as that there are members of the human race who do not and will not support us. All those who will use war and propaganda against all of our very trendy ideas about peace will work against us despite our lofty ideals.

But we will win, our ideals will win, won't they? Because they are ideal and everyone will see them, will they not?

They will not. Why? Simply and obviously because some folks will, simply and obviously, choose not to accept them. The curse of a vapid individualism is that it must allow that the feelings of every individual deserves to be heard. Every faction, it seems, deserves its day in court.

At what cost? The millions who died during World War II or the Great Leap Forward? Would they share a general and vacuous feeling that: 'all we are saying, is give peace a chance?'

We doubt it.