Copy editing test: describe the problem with this sentence, from an article by Rich Lowry, editor of National Review:
[Soleimani] was also a cold-blooded killer of Americans who deserved to die.
Were I a copy editor at National Review—what grammarians call a "condition way contrary to fact"—I think I'd advise my boss's boss's boss's boss that the referent of "who" is comically hazy. You have to understand something beyond grammar to understand that "who" refers to Soleimani. By grammar alone, it could apply to "Americans." Soleimani is a cold-blooded killer of Americans. Which Americans? The ones who deserve to be killed!
I'm a regular reader of NRO, National Review Online. The huffings and puffings of the dogmatic right-wingers are a source of amusement, and the posts by the more reasonable ones, when for example arguing for the impeachment and removal of Trump, gain force by the suspicion that they amount to statements against interest: the editorialist hates to say it, but the merits of the case insist. The occasional internecine dust-ups are highly entertaining and, sometimes, instructive. When, for example, New York's state legislature was in 2011 poised to pass a same-sex marriage bill, National Review writer Kathryn Jean Lopez quoted, approvingly, Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who said, "Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America—not in China or North Korea." This elicited from Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts, who four years hence would publish in National Review a 7000-word essay defending same-sex marriage, the following retort:
So it is your view, Kathryn, that the action of democratically elected representatives, who are accountable to the citizens of the State of New York, is tyrannical in a way that justifies comparison to North Korea, a state in which an absolute ruler has burned people alive in a stadium. Okay. But now I want a new word for what "tyranny" used to mean.
I would like to see the reaction of a North Korean refugee to your claim.
It would also be nice if you troubled yourself to make an argument.
I doubt the reaction of a North Korean refugee could have been more on point. I've learned that most everything Steorts writes is . . . superior to the musings of archbishops. He doesn't seem to be a very active author, however. Maybe as "managing editor" he's more involved with managing stuff, or maybe he's too far off the reservation to be good for business. Most people don't surf over to NRO in order to read a closely argued piece opposing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Obama is a false prophet," on the other hand: click bait.
Jay Nordlinger is another enjoyable NRO editor/writer, though his moderate, above-the-fray tone sometimes annoys me, as when for example he recently wrote, concerning the Electoral College:
Elizabeth Warren could not have been plainer, in this tweet: "My goal is to get elected—but I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College. I want my second term to be elected by direct vote."
Democrats are not very happy about the Electoral College, and I can hardly blame them. These things are "situational." If the Senate filibuster, for example, works for you, you like it and defend it; if it doesn't, the opposite.
Democrats were bitten by the Electoral College in 2000, when George W. Bush won, and bitten again—really hard—in 2016, when Donald Trump won. What if Trump had won the popular vote and Hillary Clinton had beaten him out in the Electoral College?
Here's what I think would have happened: Trump supporters would have said, "You know, it was a tough day, but our Framers were geniuses, and that's the way the cookie crumbles in this republic of ours. We wish the president-elect well—indeed, we are praying for her—and we will see her at the polls in 2020.
Democrats, in turn, would have said, "Glad to have won this year, but the Electoral College really has to go, because it frustrates the will of a majority or a plurality. And people—wherever they live—are paramount, you know."
You had a good laugh? There is no principle here at all—it's purely partisan, purely tribal.
Possibly I lack a sense of humor on this topic, but I'm put off by the undertone of self-congratulatory adulation for having comprehended the obvious. Notice, though, that his point is predicated on another condition way contrary to fact—Clinton did not win the election despite losing the popular vote, and there was virtually no likelihood of that happening, especially compared to the likelihood of what, in the event, actually did happen. What does Nordlinger think about what actually happened? Some say twice two is x, others say it's y, and if conditions changed, they'd switch sides and arguments, and apparently if you're smart enough to notice that much you are excused from looking into the question of what twice two actually equals.
I liked the long first part of this Nordlinger column, however.
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