We got a fine lesson this week in the art of language — one reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass who said, 'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
The Minister of Immigration, Peter Dutton, seems to have learned this lesson very well in relation to the word 'detention', which he redefined in relation to asylum seeker children to exclude not only those still remaining in Villawood (interestingly still called a 'detention centre') but also the 90 or so being sent back to languish on Nauru.
While the language game is scarcely unique to politicians, they have — with our connivance — turned it into a rare art form.
We would, in a heartbeat, sue our lawyer, accountant or estate agent for falsifying books or contracts or causing us to lose money on investments (think about the scandal surrounding financial advisors last year). It is doubly astonishing then that we have been thoroughly conditioned to expect economy with the truth from those who are supposed to represent us at the highest levels of government.
Indeed, the situation has got so bad that some politicians are explicit about this: think about John Howard's 'core' promises and Tony Abbott's comments that only his scripted statements should be relied on. (The latter raises an interesting version of the old 'liar paradox', since that statement was presumably not itself scripted.)
The temptation is to shrug and say, 'So what's new: pollies lie and the Pope is a Catholic?' Isn't all of this up there with the toilet habits of bears as an unremarkable description of the way the world works?
Yes and no. We may be used to politicians lying or breaking their promises but, if we accept it as part of the way the world works, then we must also accept that this says something deeper about the fitness for purpose of our political system.
Immanuel Kant, the famous 18th century German philosopher, said that lying was wrong because it disregarded the worth of the individual being lied to. That may sound like high-flown idealism and typically theoretical philosopher's waffle, but his reasoning is actually very practical.
"So what's new: pollies lie and the Pope is a Catholic. Isn't all of this up there with the toilet habits of bears as an unremarkable description of the way the world works? Yes and no."
For Kant, autonomy (the