Bill Kristol, stop profaning Latin

The problem with overeducated elites is that they can use their knowledge of barely relevant arcana to strongarm others into accepting a point they might otherwise reject. I consider it intellectual dishonesty — even intellectual bullying — and it is especially reprehensible in a newspaper column intended for ordinary people.

Bill Kristol, I am calling you out on your misuse of Latin.

The piece begins innocently enough, with the correct point that politics is by definition vulgar (given the Latin vulgus, crowd), and that this presidential race is no more vulgar than any election in our history. It follows that Peggy Noonan's phrase "a new vulgarization in American politics" to describe the Sarah Palin effect is ridiculous, and that she meant something like "a new anti-intellectualism in American politics."

The line is crossed, however, when Kristol drags the Golden Age Roman poet Horace into the mix. The quotation from Odes 3.1 (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo) he translates incorrectly as "I hate the ignorant crowd and I keep them at a distance." It is a huge stretch to render profanum as "ignorant" — it really means "uninitiated" in a religious context, whence the English profane, meaning "unholy." If Kristol had bothered to read the rest of the poem, he would have immediately discovered the correct context. The whole first stanza reads as follows:

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo;
favete linguis. carmina non prius
audita Musarum sacerdos
virginibus puerisque canto.

Translated:

I disdain the uninitiated crowd, and I keep them away; hold your tongues! I, the priest of the Muses, chant their previously unheard songs to maidens and boys.

Notice the religious language? But the poem isn't strictly religious; in fact, it goes on to discuss politics, emphasizing the variety of candidates for office, whether they have noble birth, fame, wealth or popularity. At its conclusion, the poet professes his disdain for wealth in general, asking cur valle permutem Sabina / divitias operosiores? or "Why should I exchange my Sabine farm for too-burdensome riches?"

Such a sentiment would fit well with Kristol's point; yet his concluding sentence is, "I join [McCain and Palin] in taking my stand with Joe the Plumber — in defiance of Horace the Poet." That's unfortunate, since Kristol and Horace might find they have a lot in common.

Don't they teach Latin at Harvard?