Dope

A friend tells us: I sent your post about bias in the press to a conservative friend of mine. He responded that Limited Inc was confusing the issue. And that Limited Inc was in the habit of confusing issues, because Limited Inc lacked a certain, necessary depth.

Now, there you go: my friend's friend has provided an explanation for a problem that has frankly puzzled us: why isn't Limited Inc exercizing world wide influence and being consulted by the powers of the Earth on a daily basis?

More specifically, this has made Limited Inc think about issues qua issues. As in, what are issues, and where do they come from?

The traditional political divisions are usually delineated by showing that, on a given array of issues, x will take this position and y will take that position. What Limited Inc is all about, gentle readers, is disputing the given-ness of the issues themselves. Their shape, their texture, their topical constitution, their implementation, their distribution... The issue machine, if you will. So that the issue of, say, bias in the media, which is usually a tug of war between people who say, hey, there is a liberal bias in the media and those who say hey, there isn't a liberal bias in the media, is recast in other terms: first, as the sociological donnee that any subculture exists and perseveres by enforcing a certain tone upon its members, and by, secondly, taking journalism as merely one of those subcultures, to be compared with the petroleum industry, or the car industry, etc. This way of treating the issue doesn't "solve' the problem of bias, but puts the explanation for bias, (and its inevitability) in terms of the historical determinants that have shaped the composition of those who work in journalism, or car design, or etc. That's a question for another day. We are seeing, in the spread of weblogs, a subculture form that is apparently tilted towards the right. I'm not sure that impression is true, but if it is, the question would be: is there a first mover advantage that would select more and more conservative webloggers? or have we not yet passed that threshhold? is the weblog subculture in a more amorpohous stage in which the population of webloggers is accumulating randomly?

But to return to the fascinating issue of the issue. To make the meta leap, the froggish jump.

The OED defines the primary meaning of issue to mean output of some sort, from the Latin, exire, a thing that goes out. An issue, in this sense, implies, first, a flow, and second, a place the flow comes to, stops at, or passes through. Issue in this sense is an egress, a child, or the expression of energy. I'm not sure how, exactly, this meaning became linked with the meaning of issue as a controversial notion. Here's how the OED defines this:

"A point on the decision of which something depends or is made to rest; a point or matter in contention between two parties; the point at which a matter becomes ripe for decision. Esp. in to put to ([]on, upon, an, the) issue and similar phrases: to bring to a point admitting of decision.

c1566 J. ALDAY tr. Boaystuau's Theat. World Biijb, The battel of this world is so perillous, the yssue so terrible and fearfull. 1613 SHAKES. Hen. VIII, V. i. 178 Now, While 'tis hot, Ile put it to the issue. 1656 BRAMHALL Replic. vi. 279 If he stand to this ground, there are no more controversies between him and me for the future but this one, what is the true Catholick Church, whether the Church of Rome..or the Church of the whole World, Roman, Grecian, Armenian, Abyssene, Russian, Protestant,..I desire no fairer issue between him and me. 1665 GLANVILL Def. Vain Dogm. 20, I am willing to put it upon the issue, whether it be so to any body else but this philosopher. 1748 RICHARDSON Clarissa I. iv. 25, I saw plainly that to have denied myself to his visits..was to bring forward some desperate issue between the two. 1863 TYNDALL Heat vi. 193 The problem I think is thus narrowed to the precise issue on which its solution depends. 1873 BURTON Hist. Scot. VI. lxxii. 290 Look at the issue between England and Scotland as it stood at the moment.

c. A matter or point which remains to be decided; a matter the decision of which involves important consequences.

1836 J. GILBERT Chr. Atonem. v. (1852) 145 Conferring the power of choice, and connecting that choice with most important issues. 1875 JOWETT Plato (ed. 2) III. 133 There is a mighty issue at stake..the good or evil of the human soul. 1898 Westm. Gaz. 22 July 3/2 �We want issues�. In the absence of issues politics become a question of self-interest..to manipulate the tariff for the benefit of trusts and manufacturers."

Limited inc doesn't want to engage in the Heideggerian folly of claiming that the semantic evolution of a term gives us the theodicy of the concept -- but we do think that there is a link between the term's emergence with a certain meaning and the historical situation in which that emergence occurs. Looking at the OED's citations, we notice that the evolution of "issue" is towards the problem/solution framework. An issue arises when there is a problem. Problems are formalized in science, and the OED's citations show that there is a back and forth between the "issue" as a description of a social problem and the 'issue" as a description of a scientific problem. The problem indicates a matter to be decided. So if one confuses an issue, one can: a, be confused about the problem that the issue is about, or that the issue indicates; or b, be confused about the correlating decisions that solve the problem. My friend's friend would probably add one more kind of confusion of issue, c, an intentional blurring of the scope of a problem for sophistical purposes.

Limited Inc's inclination is to say this: the motivation for delineating the issues as they are delineated among the governing classes should be looked at with maximum suspicion. This approach is naturally disconcerting if your politics is about viewing the divisions within the governing class (the liberal vs. conservative divide) as the defining political division. We are trying, in our humble way, to re-draw the problem set, which puts us outside of that kind of politics, even if our sympathies are to one tendency within it. This sometimes makes our points seem tendentious or extra-political. Alas, that's the price we have to pay. And so... at least for this year, it looks like the world leaders aren't going to be turning to us for political advise. But what can we say? such is the burden of greatness.