Notes on Politics, Law and Language

My notes on politics, law and language:

1. If the message is jumbled no one cares about the economic plan.  But to have an unjumbled message is not so easy.  To state and receive any message depends on a shared vocabulary, shared cultural values, shared political understandings, differences which are recognized because the underlying foundations of language are shared.  Shared goals and moral values are required for shared foundations of language.  You can play football with goalposts at either end of one stadium, but if the goalposts, the lines and the fields are a thousand miles apart there is no game.  Then there is only politics and law, with players harsh and frustrated with each other and the game itself.
2. Politicized court cases will be re-politicized.  What starts politically ends there, after a detour through the legal system.
3. It only makes sense to pass laws if they’re going to be enforced.
4. Money is political. The value of government money is changing.  The government’s language about money tells you where the value of money is going. 
5. Any party, group or community needs organizing principles.  The principles are expressed in language.  The language has to shape and define the word jumble of subjective expectations of the individuals comprising the intended group, to have any definition at all.
6. Conflicting principles result in larger judgments, which are the conclusion to court cases brought for political purposes.  The larger judgments are about the jumble because they go to identifying the foundations.  The larger judgments serve as definitions for moral language which is necessary and useful for organizing principles.
7. ‘Speaking academic’ is not a matter of truth or falsity; it is only a dialect of English. Rappers, street hippies and New York City real estate developers have the same capacity to observe events, but they will express their opinions differently than Ivy League professors or New York Times’ op-ed columnists.
8. The philosopher Wittgenstein was wrong to call language a game, because language is more important than that. It is through language we hear about Jesus. But Wittgenstein was right in asserting that no one gets to unilaterally make rules about how language is used or what words mean. The language-game is a shared enterprise among people who often vehemently disagree and there are no proof-tables available. Either you understand what someone else is saying or you don’t, but the players don’t get to throw penalty flags in the game.
9. As the philosopher Kant pointed out, if you assert there is no God, it’s impossible to find a purpose in any of this. The squirrels and Blue Jays in my yard look for no higher purpose between them, seek no meaning to their existence, have no shared political understanding, bring no court cases, do not pray and cannot hurl invective.   With no language there are no principles or foundations.
10. I don’t have to remain in a political settlement with anyone who is canceling me.  Canceling me is the act of asserting my language and goalposts are a thousand miles from theirs. But no matter how angry I grow at another human being, he or she is not a squirrel or a Blue Jay. Related through Adam, even if I am screamed at, or scream back, we remain cousins –  if beyond the scope of discussion, within the scope of prayer.
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11. “Through the law we become conscious of sin.”  When the Apostle Paul said this (Rom. 3:20) he was making a theological argument which was later expanded upon by Martin Luther.  Secular domestic law also serves purposes beyond controlling behavior for us.  Domestic secular law, enacted by our elected legislators, compels us to communicate with each under circumstances where the linguistic rupture between the two parties is so deep that most useful communication has ceased.  Today, speakers and leaders among partisan political groups make various assertions, accusations, demands, reproaches, rejoinders, in what only appears to be common English, but it’s not the same language.  The concepts underneath the words are so different as to be irreconcilable.  The concepts involve not only morality and political theory, but theology and anthropology.  Do we stand in relation to anyone or anything else, besides ourselves?
12. Yet we elect legislators, whose legislative action is necessarily presented and concluded in words.  The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” may be interpreted in different ways, but it had to be interpreted to enact it, amend it, adjudicate it, and will be interpreted to enforce it.  If we hate each other so bitterly that we throw rocks at each other, still, for some period of time, we have to get into the same room to discuss what that phrase means.  It must be interpreted so we still need to talk, mutually and angrily canceled or not.  The language game may be conducted bitterly, but it still must be conducted.  To even demand and obtain unconditional surrender from our adversaries on some point or another, one must be able to speak in a useful, shared language.
13. The ontological reality of God is not something which can be placed in a carboard box used for take-out from a pizza parlor. It undergirds our existence and our language. Wanting to communicate with others is hard-wired into the basis of our ontology. For it is the nature of humanity to press onward to agreement with others; human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds. So said G.W.F. Hegel in the preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit. Do the words that often underlie the most bitter disputes, words like ‘law’ and ‘rights’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ have a theological component to their underlying concepts, or not? I think the word ‘sin’ sits somewhere in the conceptual meaning of any of those words and when I use the word ‘law’ I can mean the law as presented by Moses, or described by the Apostle Paul, or enacted by Congress, depending on the context. But the meanings sit on top of one another in my language game. It sounds abstract until we get to the question of whether it is lawful to enforce the laws against illegal immigration or whether it is lawful and morally obligatory to not enforce them. The short form of the debate may be shaped by how we feel about illegal immigration, but the long form of the debate revolves around how we understand the word law. Sooner or later that word law has to sit down somewhere – for me, that word sits down onto the ontological reality of God. But I can’t work that reality into any useful discussion – achieving a comprehensive community of minds winds up failing and separating into component pieces of partisan political groupings. Not wanting to talk about God or sin, we wind up talking about ‘the law’ and meaning really different things, with the phrase moral obligation floating so differently in each partisan camp that nothing is left but to throw rocks at one another.
14. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was a very smart guy. He won his argument (that our experience starts with something prior to sense data) against the British empiricists, David Hume and John Locke, by a score of about 72-14. It’s a shame Kant did not apply his intelligence fully and unreservedly to the Gospel of John. Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John operate on many levels and had Kant read those words over and thought about them, Kant had the intellectual equipment to grasp just how deeply Christ was expressing himself.  The same might be said for the hypothetical of Kant reading the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Kant grew up in a world that theologically was dominated by the thought of Martin Luther. So by virtue of osmosis, if nothing else, Kant would or should have known what arguments the Apostle Paul was presenting and why.  But although Kant is obviously reacting to such arguments, he never directly confronts them except in such a general way that the discussion is superficial. (But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? is a rhetorical question from Paul in his discussion of divine election which raises issues both of God’s authority and man’s identity – Rom. 9:20).

    When I began reading books by authors about Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason, including really useful books by Paul Guyer and Karl Ameriks, it surprised me that no one anywhere in the Kant universe seemed to grasp the direct contradiction and disagreement between Luther and Kant. Of course I was on the Luther side of that difference of opinion, Bondage of the Will being the best theological work I ever read outside the Bible itself, notwithstanding that it is an imperfect book by an imperfect man. But no one else, of all the people commenting on Kant, even seemed to perceive how vehemently the two men differed on free will, or why one might like to ponder that question even longer than the time it takes to pick your fantasy football team.

    The connection here to the general topic of the law appears attenuated, but I’m getting there. After Kant was done asserting his free will, then he sat in his study in Konigsberg and developed in his sole discretion various moral imperatives, which became his categorical imperatives. In so doing, he intentionally made himself deaf to the outside world. It didn’t matter if the Apostle Paul came to him to talk about an experience on the Damascus Road, it didn’t matter to him if Martin Luther called into question just how seriously any created being can assert the idea of free will, it didn’t matter to him if Jesus declared himself to be the Bread of Life – and it certainly didn’t matter to Kant if Moses came to him and said – here is the Law, on stone tablets. Kant was in his study, and the world, including that part of the world which incorporates the law (or the Law, however one views it), revolved around Kant.

    Which brings me to the point here – if we are going to talk about the law, or the Law, whether secular, philosophical or theological – then we begin by talking first, identifying first, the source of the Law. Is Kant the source of the law? Is Kant’s particular set of beliefs, preferences, ideas and cognitions, the source of the law? The problems of any individual so identifying himself as the source of the Law are obvious. Luther was deeply concerned about his inability to keep God’s Law, but that necessarily meant that Luther grasped from where the Law comes, who declares it. God declares the Law. The First Commandment is rather to the point and it is the ontological and epistemological source of all Law.

    And God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Ex. 20:1-2

    The entire Bible is, considered from at least one viewpoint, one continuous diatribe against idolatry. If we are going to have discussions about the Law, or even secular law, the discussion has to begin with the source – who sources the Law, initially, as a first declaration, before we begin to apply it to a specific set of circumstances.  That discussion is equally relevant in the case of the interpretation of secular law.  Judges are supposed to be declaring the law on the basis of statute, precedent and common sense, and fundamental morality and justice.  But the precedent and the common sense start with a declaration of what the law is.  Precedents and common sense derive their power from incorporating, or even sublating, prior experiences and understanding – as Kant would point out forcefully, if you are going to have a discussion about one set of conditions giving way, causing or preceding another set of prior or following conditions, you have to start with an unconditioned declaration from a source which requires no prior imprimatur of authority or authenticity.

    15. And fiends nail time bombs to the hands of the clock – Bob Dylan, at least as sung by Joan Baez in Farewell, Angelina. Pop songs frequently ask – ‘When will we meet again?’ – it’s a serious question and the concept of that question underlies the language that we use in having discussions. When parties go into a courtroom to have a dispute judicially resolved, they use legal language and expect an adjudicated result. After they leave the courtroom, they never intend or expect to see each other again. The language of legal finality undergirds the dialect of English which is spoken. To borrow again from Dylan, what is left is a table standing empty by the edge of the sea. There is no remaining relationship between litigating parties when the litigation is over – just silence.

    When Christians have a dispute, there is a mechanism described in Matthew 18:15-17 by Jesus, which involves taking ‘one or two others’ to have the discussion. Underlying the language of Christian faith is the idea of church as a recurring event and concept. Even if the disputing parties leave the church after service on Sunday morning by separate doors, the following week the parties will come back together into church. Church is not like a courtroom; the people who come to worship come there, as it were, eternally and continually. See chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation. The concepts which underlay the discussion between disputing brothers in Matthew 18 are different than legal language for reasons more profound than technical legal jargon. The parties expect to see one another again, unless one of them really is just ‘a pagan or a tax collector.’ Since in most disputes, people do not feel that they themselves are such an antagonist to the Christian faith, the language they use has to reflect the expectations and self-identities which they have. The table which remains is the table of the Lord’s supper, the Eucharist; no one has ever suggested that Jesus’ disciples were always in love with each other.  But the Lord’s table remains.

    In politics, usefully characterized in part as a system of organized hatreds, there is a sense of interrupted continuity. We come together for elections, typically once every two or four years. The organizing activity which looks to those events, and the concepts which undergird political language have that expectation. We expect to compete, contest, even hate – but we also expect some continuous, sporadic relationship. I’m not very fond of Hegel, but you could drag in here his thesis-antithesis-synthesis thinking (which grossly oversimplifies him, but it’s not much of a loss). Each side would like to destroy or at least sublate the other, but each side needs each other. There is no Republican Party without a Democratic Party; there is no Democratic Party without a Republican Party. Substantial changes in the ideological outlook of either party stimulate the most pained and eloquent response from the other party! If they really had nothing to say to each other, why would they care? The language of politics reflects the concepts which inhere in the passage of time. We may hate each other, but we will, indeed, meet again.

    16.  Immediately above this post is a post authored by Darryl Blackwell, a prisoner serving a life sentence for crimes of violence, incarcerated now for about 40 years, called “Do We Live in a War Zone?” Darry’s language speaks for itself – I don’t need to characterize it. He served in the U.S. Army, is a veteran honorably discharged, and among other things, drove heavy military vehicles in Germany, similar to the type which led to the accidental death of four soldiers recently in Poland. Darryl has some commentary to make about “who will have to put on a uniform/carry lethal weapons/and a nation’s flag/do you really comprehend what that means/be unwittingly sent into conflict.” Darryl, as an enlisted soldier then and now as a prisoner is articulate, but on the blunt end of the language ladder.

    Recently I read an article in Foreign Affairs titled How Not to End the War in Ukraine. The authors are Tetiana Kyselova and Yuna Potomkina; the article is dated March 1, 2025. Without delving into the conclusions of the authors too deeply, its worth noting how different their language is. One author is a professor, another a lawyer. The language they use is one of diplomacy. So their article uses phrases such as “enforcement and security guarantees;” “significant casualties;” “strict third-party oversight and enforcement;” “restore compliance or apply penalties;” “enforcement mechanisms;” “security measures;” “security guarantees;” “imposing sanctions;” “joint military peacekeeping mission;” “robust enforcement’” would be necessary to control “a large conflict zone.”

    I could go on here – notwithstanding their academic and diplomatic language, the authors are not hiding the ball. “The war’s frontlines must first be stabilized so that ongoing fighting does not muddy the talks.” The authors’ assert that “Europe needs a seat at the negotiating table; a unified position on the provision of security, military and economic support to Ukraine[.]” [My emphasis]. Perhaps after the provision of that ‘security support’ and the application of unspecified ‘enforcement mechanisms,’ there might be other blunt-speakers singing Darryl’s song. I hope the Europeans understand what will be required of them. There’s nothing surprising about discovering that a former G.I., now a prisoner, uses different language than two authors educated into the dialect of diplomacy. My only point is that these two examples of the use of language are like two ends of the same ladder; when the diplomats use the term security guarantee and enforcement mechanism what the Darryl’s of the world know they characterize as such mournful reminder/as flags/the symbol of ideas/constantly fly at half-staff/another soul laid to rest.
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