{"id":493,"date":"2007-10-17T07:31:41","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T11:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=493"},"modified":"2007-10-17T08:27:38","modified_gmt":"2007-10-17T12:27:38","slug":"493","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=493","title":{"rendered":"Sicut Philosophus docet in II Ethicorum"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Will<\/a>, comedian:<\/p>\n

>Explaining a simple proposal to help people squirrel away gold for their golden years, Hillary Clinton said that a person “should not require a PhD to save for retirement.” But can even PhDs understand liberalism’s arithmetic and logic<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

This is funny. He says little about either arithmetic or logic, but a lot about the meanings of words:<\/p>\n

>SCHIP is described as serving “poor children” or children of “the working poor.” Everyone agrees that it is for “low-income” people. Under the bill that Democrats hope to pass over the president’s veto tomorrow, states could extend eligibility to households earning $61,950. But America’s median household income is $48,201. How can people above the median income be eligible for a program serving lower-income people?<\/p>\n

The Stagirite <\/a>offers again some simple and obvious instruction:<\/p>\n

>How this is to happen we have stated already, but it will be made plain also by the following consideration of the specific nature of virtue. In everything that is continuous and divisible it is possible to take more, less, or an equal amount, and that either in terms of the thing itself or relatively to us; and the equal is an intermediate between excess and defect. By the intermediate in the object I mean that which is equidistant from each of the extremes, which is one and the same for all men; by the intermediate relatively to us that which is neither too much nor too little- and this is not one, nor the same for all. For instance, if ten is many and two is few, six is the intermediate, taken in terms of the object; for it exceeds and is exceeded by an equal amount; this is intermediate according to arithmetical proportion. But the intermediate relatively to us is not to be taken so; if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little- too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic exercises. The same is true of running and wrestling. Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this- the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

“Low income” is much like quantities of food for ancient Greek wrestlers: it’s relative to how big you are (your family that is) and where you live. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Will, comedian: >Explaining a simple proposal to help people squirrel away gold for their golden years, Hillary Clinton said that a person “should not require a PhD to save for retirement.” But can even PhDs understand liberalism’s arithmetic and logic? This is funny. He says little about either arithmetic or logic, but a lot … Continue reading Sicut Philosophus docet in II Ethicorum<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equivocation","category-will","category-suppressed-evidence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}