That last sentence is factually wrong. There’s giving “the other side” a strawman to attack your position.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Massachusetts state constitution currently requires state funding of Protestant religious activities. I guess no one’s gotten around to challenging it, and I’m not sure how you’d go about it.
I have a theory that much of the less-than-literate language usage that we see daily is generated by people who do little if any reading of good, classic literature. In other words, if one rarely sees examples of good English usage, and instead reads only semi-literate ramblings from other people who rarely read, the result is a downgrading of their English skills.
Along those lines, I think about some of the less-than-literate writing that I had to review at my last job.
The older employees, by and large, had good skills, but many of those under the age of…perhaps 35 or so…had the unique ability to come up with new combinations of words that had no real meaning when placed in the context in which they were used.
The most glaring example of this phenomenon was “for all intensive purposes”, instead of, “for all intents and purposes”. This young woman had apparently heard the expression (actually, she misheard it), but had clearly never seen it in print. Since she was also one of our non-readers, this helps to illustrate my theory.
“I have a theory that much of the less-than-literate language usage that we see daily is generated by people who do little if any reading of good, classic literature.”
On a lighter note, I recently watched a video compilation of “The Best of Jaywalking”–where Jay Leno asks people on the street to answer questions regarding things that every American should know, or perhaps, every literate person should know.
One of the ignoramuses was asked, “Who wrote Handel’s Messiah?”.
The ignoramus responded by saying, “I never read books”.
While his response obviously revealed a total lack of cultural awareness as it relates to music, his response does seem to ring true. Thus, it is likely that his reponse was honest, and that he is actually a non-reader.
Hmm, let’s see, L.A., a network TV show, nah, none of that stuff on the Tonight Show is ever scripted. Ever. No one ever packages “appeared on Jaywalking” alongside their headshots when they go for their next audition. Never.
As for “for all intensive purposes” was she at least a good boss? You surely know the punchline to the old joke “Which one got the job?” but hey, when you got a boss that got the job, you’re doing good.
p.s. The obvious answer to the musical question is “Jim Handel” of Handel on the Law, a nationally syndicated radio show.
There’s “I listen to classical music” and then there’s “I know fake from real.”
I feel so good about all the people I’m better than. All those ignoramuses and such.
Although Goodwin’s Law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law ) doesn’t seem to apply in this forum, we should have our own version of it. We could call it [b]Whitey’s Law[/b], that every forum discussion will eventually lead to someone being called a troll if it goes on long enough.