Good arguments. I especially like the phrasing that history doesn’t bend itself but can be bent by our efforts.
In many ways, caring about nuances and distinctions and the little subtleties of language (which many people seem to think don’t matter) is a fundamentally small-c conservative trait. “It’s just an expression,” people will say about something. The natural response is, “what do you mean ‘just?’”
As to your redundancy point, I know you meant redundancy in rhetoric and not in general, but Nassim Taleb, in his classic book Antifragile, makes a very interesting defense of redundancy which you might like given it’s lack of popularity.
Good arguments. I especially like the phrasing that history doesn’t bend itself but can be bent by our efforts.
In many ways, caring about nuances and distinctions and the little subtleties of language (which many people seem to think don’t matter) is a fundamentally small-c conservative trait. “It’s just an expression,” people will say about something. The natural response is, “what do you mean ‘just?’”
As to your redundancy point, I know you meant redundancy in rhetoric and not in general, but Nassim Taleb, in his classic book Antifragile, makes a very interesting defense of redundancy which you might like given it’s lack of popularity.