…but I think I understand the grammar of the English language passably well. Apparently some of the law faculty of Georgetown University, who lately appeared on the News Hour, do not.
In English the subjunctive mood of a verb is sometimes used to express a condition that does not exist. Mr. Obama is not a commentator in the conservative media. If he were, he might have said that “unelected” persons display “judicial activism” when they overturn the deliberate acts of an elected body established for that purpose. But he’s not. And he didn’t. That’s how the subjunctive mood is supposed to work.
So the law professor who said the President’s proposition is “invalid” ignored, or is showing his ignorance of, the form and natural meaning of the sentence in question. Other speeches on this matter, including Mr. Ryan saying the expression was “unpresidential,” have some, if only partisan, cause for overlooking the rules of grammar.
The Georgetown colleague who delivered the counterpoint at least expressed the view that the statement is valid, without taking note of the question of grammar. Maybe that’s even worse, if it means he thinks the President was criticizing “unelected,” “activist” judges. The President made it clear he wasn’t, the following day, without backtracking, but just by expressing himself in the indicative mood.
Yet last Friday, even Mark Shields, whom I respect, didn’t note the construction of the sentence in question either. So perhaps what I call its “natural meaning” no longer holds. There’s a lot more to be said about this – from the people who brought you “Who to Contact,” in a collectively unconscious effort to obliterate the distinction between the nominative and objective cases.
What I heard the President say, I took to be a criticism of the conservative media, who, if they wanted to be consistent with themselves, ought to be criticizing the Court for legislating at all on the matter of insuring for the national health. But they don’t. And they aren’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment