Comparison can make numbers vivid. It's one thing to note that there were "2,212,475 prisoners at the end of 2003" in the United States; it's another thing to recognize that it's a larger number than "[t]he population [of the gulag] at any one time" ("Surpassing the Gulag in Scale," <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/06/surpassing-gulag-in-scale.html>).
>[lbo-talk] Re: Surpassing the Gulag in Scale
>Luke Weiger lweiger at umich.edu
>Mon Jun 20 13:50:54 PDT 2005
<snip>
> > On 6/20/05, BklynMagus <magcomm at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Montrous acts are monstrous acts are monstrous acts.
>
>Scale matters and so does proportionate criticism. Drawing an
>equivalence between Gitmo and the gulags makes about as much sense
>as drawing an equivalence between the gulags and the concentration
>camps.
To say that "[t]he detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law" ("Foreword," Amnesty International Report 2005) is to employ a hyperbole, a valid figure of speech. What is hyperbole? "Hyperbole: A trope composed of exaggerated words or ideals used for emphasis and not to be taken literally. Example: 'I've told you a million times not to call me a liar!'" ("Tropes and Schemes," <http://rhetorica.net/tropes.htm>).
Rhetoric was once a pillar of Liberal Arts. "They are called liberal (Lat. liber, free), because they serve the purpose of training the free man, in contrast with the artes illiberales, which are pursued for economic purposes" ("The Seven Liberal Arts," <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01760a.htm>) -- therefore essential to education of citizens in a republic.
David Bosco's literal-mindedness, which mistakes a hyperbole for an assertion of equivalency, is another instance of the fact that conservatives seldom appreciate, let alone master, classics. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>