When clever clichés overwhelm truth in political debate

As we step into the quasi-official start of the political campaign for the Nov. 5 General Election, we are certain to hear a wide range of clichés intended to suggest the speaker’s erudition and to assume the listener’s inherent agreement, even if the parties hold differing points of view.

Among my pet peeves of these is one that cropped up in a Keith Raffel column we published this week, though, as I suspect you’ll agree, Raffel is far from the only person to lean on it when making an argument. Let’s look at it for a moment, along with a few similarly worn-out phrases.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

This phrase is generally attributed to the late Democratic New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whom Raffel evokes as someone he once worked with though the phrase has now become so ubiquitous it’s likely most of those who use it have no idea of its origins, indeed often repeating it as though they came up with it themselves.

The phrase is a clever enough construction from the uniquely eloquent Moynihan, but does warrant at least a bit of analysis. Most people who use it seem to be suggesting that someone’s “facts” they are disputing or expanding upon are incorrect or inadequate, while the “facts” they are subsequently providing indisputably affirm their own case. Perhaps your experience is different, but mine is that the people employing this phrase are in truth merely adding or reinterpreting “their own facts.” They are committing the very sin they complain of with the suggestion that in their case, it is no sin.

This was not, I must add, the primary goal of Raffel’s use of the phrase. Indeed, I wasn’t quite sure how the phrase related to his overall theme — which was that many pro-Palestinian protesters are almost entirely ignorant of the facts of Middle Eastern history. No one can “own” facts he does not know. But I digress. The point is, the phrase is worn-out, misunderstood and no longer persuasive.

“A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Republicans and Democrats alike employ this phrase lavishly, almost always alluding to its origins from Benjamin Franklin, generally in an effort to condescend to an audience they believe does not share their own understanding of history or democracy. No, the United States is not a pure democracy. It is a republic, based on representative democracy.

I write this knowing very well I am sure to get hate mail assuring me that I understand neither republicanism nor democracy. When I do, I will sigh, roll my eyes and think, as I hope many others would today, “OK, smarty-pants. I salute your scholarship. But the phrase is still overdone and almost always irrelevant to the political arguments in which it used.”

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Those who use this phrase also almost invariably invoke the name of its suspected originator, Albert Einstein, as though they heard or read it from the genius himself. They didn’t, at least not most of them. And if you ask me, “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” is one example of many ways to define ignorance, not insanity, which is a very different thing.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

I admit it is my opinion and not a fact, but this quote from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson is, taken without context, simply disgusting. To suggest that we must inevitably kill each other in revolutions every few decades or democracy (or a democratic republic) will slide into ruin is at best dubious and at worst, simply an excuse to justify any violent revolt. Nor is it exactly what Jefferson meant, which is a debate much too complicated to go into here, though the trope’s overuse has surely rendered it impotent where polemics are concerned.

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

I first heard this phrase as a joke when I was barely more than a teenager in the early 1970s. It had been repeated thousands of times by 1986, when Ronald Reagan laid claim to it as “the nine most terrifying words in the English language.” It has been repeated millions of times more since, usually as a nod to Reagan’s wisdom and the unassailable notion of government’s inherent greed and incompetence. I can only reply that the phrase has become so common that its kernal of truth has expanded to overwhelm the very many ways in which government is both helpful and competent. And that is harmful to our representative democracy.

Perhaps there are phrases like these that you hear, see or read but recognize the repetition has robbed them of their power. In the debates and discussions we involve ourselves in over the next 10 weeks, let’s resolve to find more accurate, more original ways to make our cases.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on X at @JimSlusher. His new book “Conversations, community and the role of local news” is available at eckhartzpress.com.