[WikiEN-l] What's in a (country's) name?

Thu Mar 10 20:10:41 UTC 2005

Relating to the Coulter-Canada thing:

Consider four countries, A, B, C and D. Each has a government and a
bunch of ordinary citizens. Now let's talk about money. The government
keeps its money in the Treasury. The ordinary citizens keep their money
in their pockets.

Disaster strikes abroand, and money begins to flow from these four lands
to help victims overseas. Reporters covering the story from every
conceivable angle hit upon the idea of ranking the countries in terms of
how much money each has sent (or promised to send) for relief efforts.
They even calculate the per capita donations, by divided money by
population.

Here's the catch: suppose money from A comes primarily from the
government Treasury, while private donations from the Pockets of
ordinary citizens (or the charitable organizations they fund) is much
less.

   A(T) > A(P)

But in country B it might be the opposite. Their government doesn't send
nearly as much as the ordinary people do:

   B(T) < B(P)

Now comes the article, where the newspaper writer praises country A for
sending so much money while criticizing country B for its stinginess.

   A is the highest - counting only government money

Someone in B says, "Wait a minute: you can't ignore private donations.
We actually gave more than A, if you factor in non-govermental
contributions."

   B = B(T) + B(P) - counting both Treasury and Private

People use the names of countries differently, depending on the context
and on the point they're trying to make. If the TOTAL amount aid out of
a country  

   B(T) + B(P)

is highest, then it's the "winner" in this contest. Unless we only count
government aid, in which case A is the winner, i.e., its GOVERNMENT is
the winner.

The point is that Canada sent troops all right, just not Government
troops. Canada (the nation as a whole) send 12,000 men - or they "went",
anyway - and they did fight on the South Vietnamese side.

Coulter's mistake was in not knowing (or saying) that CANADIANS did
serve as soldiers in Vietnam. The interviewer's mistake (or deliberate
deception) was in not acknowedging that Canadians DID SERVE as soldiers
in Vietnam. 

He wanted to make it all about the government, which he knew (either at
the moment, or when editing later or when discussing with his producer
how to show Coulter in a bad light) hadn't sent the men.

So we really need to use this example in an article about how the
liberal media goes out of its way to discredit "the right" while NEVER
conceding any error of its own and even DELIBERATELY deceiving the
public.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed