Our Latinate Political Scene (A Political Vocabulary Exercise)
March 8, 2010
Students of politics should refresh the Latin that they learned in high school, because it would provide them with some insight into our current universe of political discourse and action.
The Republic Party is the “ob” party, the party of the Latin preposition “ob,” which means “against/regarding.” This preposition conveys a sense of in-your-face againstness. Two English nouns that have this as a root are: obstacle and obloquy. The English adjectives derived from it include: obdurate, obfuscatory, objectionable, objurgating, obliterative, oblivious, obnoxious, obscene, obscurantist, obsequious, obsessive, obsolescent, obstinate, obstreperous, obstructionist, obtrusive, obtundent, obturating, and obtuse.
The Democratic Party is the “si” party, the party of the Latin conjunction “si,” which means “if.” The iffiness of the Democratic Party has made it seem like a cadre of temporizing bumblers, the party of unfulfilled conditionality. Some of its mottoes could be: “if we had the courage of our convictions,” “if we had the principled certainty to act decisively,” or “if we valued the truth enough to confront proliferated lies directly.”
This is only the tip of the iceberg of what Latin has to teach us about our current political stagnation.
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