Dog Latin

Habemus Oratorum Domum?

Can Paul Ryan win the support of the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and the Tuesday Group? If he can, forget the speakership, let’s talk sainthood, because unifying House Republicans counts as his first miracle.

E.  Christian Kopff sent me this gem, written by one Jim Geraghty from the NR website.  I don’t read National Review in any form, print, internet, or the original crayon, so I don’t know who Mr. Geraghty is or if he has a whimsical turn of mind or if he is possibly fond of ridiculing the ignorance of learned languages that characterizes his colleagues and readers. nI should not like to do the fellow an injustice.

If we play the odds, however, we should never make the mistake of overestimating “conservative" journalists.  Unless he is a latter-day Borges, I suppose we have to believe that he actually thinks that: Habemus oratorum domum means “We have a speaker of the House,” when in fact it means “We have a house of speakers,” a statement than which (as his magazine's founder would have said) nothing could be more preposterous.

I might agree, if one of my readers complained:

At a time when Europe is being swamped by Islamic invaders, when Republican candidates are ignoring the Democrats and spending all their time attacking each other, when, in general, this country is going to Hell as fast as it can, surely a Latin gaffe is a minor distraction.

On second thought, however, our country is the way it is, partly because  the members of our elite, in wrecking American education, have lobotomized themselves to the point that they can describe Barack Obama as “eloquent” and think the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are models of English prose when, in fact, they are not written in standard English, though for real entertainment--if your taste runs to watching cripples fall down the stairs--one has to turn to National Public Radio.

My old classics professor Walton Morris imposed on us students a series of “Morris’s Maxims” which ran:

1. If you know it, you can say it.
2. If you can’t say it, you don’t know it.
3. If you can translate it, but you cannot explain the grammar, you cheated (by using a “trot.)

It occurs to me that I might append a corollary:

If you think you know something but cannot express it correctly and coherently, you are probably repeating some propagandist’s talking points that have been drummed into your witless head.

English is a very sloppy language, always threatening to dissolve into incoherence and stupidity.  It took the teaching of Latin (and to some extent French) to batter the Anglo-American mind into some kind of disciplined coherence. The alternative was a rigorous training in mathematics, logic, and science, disciplines that do not train their students in eloquence but do teach them to think.

Only 100 years ago, most members of the American elite—whether writers, politicians, or clergymen—had learned enough Latin to write like Chesterton and Belloc, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Mencken and Nock.  Now they are lucky to write like A.A. Milne reporting the conversation of Winnie the Poo.  After World War II, most writers and many politicians, even if they never learned Latin, had been educated by people who had been disciplined by the old system.

I was never much of a fan of Bill Buckley,  and in his later years he positively disliked me.  In fact, I was the third classicist to disturb his dogmatic-liberal slumbers, the first two being Revilo Oliver and Gary Wills.  Still, at his best, Bill could turn a phrase and remember his Latin.  Taken for all, he did much more good than harm, if only by reminding us that there were once educated people in America.  He could think through an issue, and, even if he came to a false conclusion, his ability to marshall arguments could be stunning.   We shall probably not see his like again, certainly not in my lifetime.

As one of his successors might exclaim:

O Temporum, O Mora