Posted on 08/28/2002 3:55:23 PM PDT by Festa
Perusing through college op-eds, essays, and activist slogans, my internal respect-o-meter hits rock bottom every time I hear a cliché. When a lot of college students attempt to prove their point they will blurt out something along the lines of “Its better 10 guilty men go free than one innocent men go to jail.” The reader’s or group members nod their heads as if the individual has just stated the Pythagorean proof or pulled out a trump card. But for the 10% of us who are skeptics, we cry out, “wait a minute! Why is it better? You see a lot of the times clichés are just plain batty.
Take the above example. Maybe its better that 10 confirmed rapists get let loose while 1 innocent man is set free. Perhaps that’s the price of liberty when an innocent victim is raped or shot because, hey, better the rapists and murderers go free then the innocent go to jail. But this topic at least warrants discussion before it is considered a fact.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the principle: We should err on the side of protecting the innocent rather than punishing the guilty. Fair enough. But quite often — too often — when people throw out this old adage, they seem to think the principle settles the argument when in fact it only sets the stage for it.
For instance, how come it's better that ten guilty men go free? When we translate the principle to reality, we've got to pick a threshold number. So why not say it's better that 50 guilty men go free? Or, say, two guilty men? Is 10 a special number? Or is it just easy to say? Or haven't you thought about it all? Most often, people haven't thought about it all. So let me ask you this, “Is it better to set 2 million guilty men free than to convict one innocent person?” It is fine to err on the side of the innocent. But the real work comes when we decide we are going to do that AND STILL keep the murderers and rapists in jail.
Here is another awful cliché, “To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” This is often cited as an example of the noble wisdom of William Shakesphere, when, in fact, the lines are nonsense. Furthermore Shakespeare knew this and had a complete nitwit, Polonius, say them. Polonius said this at the end of a long-winded speech where he gave some pretty dubious advice out to his son Laertes. That is precisely why Shakespeare did it this way: to show you how incredibly stupid it really is!
The idea that being true to yourself means you cannot be false to any man is utter nonsense. Politicians are true to themselves all the time yet still manage to wreak havoc upon almost anything they touch. Take, for instance, the man of science. What would a man of science say if you urged him, above all things, to be true to himself? He would reply, if he were a real man of science that his self was the very thing he had to manage to set aside if he wanted to succeed in his investigations.
Finally, the most odious statement I have ever heard was: “Unless you walk in a man’s shoes, unless you where there, you have no right to judge.” Sure, this is a fine principle. But it is still wrong 90% of the time. I've been neither a slave nor a slave owner; am I therefore deprived of ever offering an opinion on slavery? Can I never criticize a professional football player, president of the United States, or policeman, because I've never been any of those things, either? Should we get rid of juries entirely since we usually don't allow murderers and thieves to decide the fate of murderers and thieves? Please.
It is dangerous for a person to live by clichés. To plug these statements into their lifestyles as if they were mathematical certitudes without first reflecting upon them can lead to serious problems. Clichés often foster entire ideologies that prevent people from talking about real reform. Too often, however, college campuses throw these and other like phrases around attempting to silence their critics and destroy free speech.
...and apostrophe's aren't always our friends, either.
Allow me to propose that we dedicate this thread to enumerating popular FR clichés in the (vain) hope that ridicule will make them disappear into the abyss once and for all.
A propos clichés, there was once a newspaper review of a Harry Potter book where the reviewer counted a dozen or so clichés on the first two pages of the book. A few days later, a letter to the editor claimed there were as many as 15. I shlepped to a bookstore to count them myself and found only 10 (numbers from memory.)
You can say that again!
Can I get a witness?
Case CLOSED!
"Writing well, or even acceptably, involves struggle more than axioms. Martin Amis called his recent collection of literary essays The War Against Cliché. To write, as he says, means campaigning against cliché: "Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart." This involves far more than taste. Clichés deaden prose but also deaden information, discussion, and the people who use them. They limit and enclose thought, forcing it down predetermined channels.Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and politician, put it beautifully: "The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defence lawyer, judge, and the law."
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