Free The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time by William Safire Page B

that the verb differentiate should be transitive. I used it without an object; common usage has made that intransitive form correct, but it is not preferred in formal writing. I can defend my intransitive usage—gee, it was only in a scribbled note—but here I am on the defensive, which is surely what Scalia had in mind. (At least he bracketed a suggested correction rather than a humiliating [ sic ]. In return, I have not sic ’d his use of “was differentiating” when the contrary-to-fact subjunctive called for were .)
    “I shall assume,” he continues, “that such differentiation is impossible—that compassion is always benevolent—though that may not be true. (People sometimes identify with others’ suffering, ‘suffer with’ them—to track the Latin root of compassion —not because they particularly love the others or ‘wish them well’—to track the Latin root of benevolence —but because they shudder at the prospect of the same thing’s happening to themselves. ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ This is arguably not benevolence, but self-love.)”
    I suspect that my frequent plunge into etymology in this column has just been satirized, but maybe I flatter myself. He goes on in true Supreme Court style to restate the question at hand about benevolent compassion and to address it:
    “But assuming the premise, is it redundancy to attribute to a noun a quality that it always possesses?” Scalia’s opinion: “Surely not. We speak of ‘admirable courage’ (is courage ever not admirable?); a ‘cold New England winter’ (is a New England winter ever not cold?); the ‘sweet, green spring’ (is springtime ever not sweet and green?). It seems to me perfectly acceptable to use an adjective to emphasize one of the qualities that a noun possesses, even if it always possesses it. The writer wants to stress the coldness of the New England winter, rather than its interminable length, its gloominess, its snowiness and many other qualities that it always possesses. And that is what I was doing with ‘benevolent compassion’—stressing the social-outreach, maternalistic, goo-goo character of the court’s compassion.”
    Let me interrupt here to footnote the meaning and etymology of goo-goo, which some may mistakenly take as akin to gooey. This was the derisive appellation given by the New York Sun in the 1890s to local action groups calling themselves “Good Government Clubs”; New York City Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt castigated fellow reformers who voted independent as “those prize idiots, the Goo-Goos .”

    I have just returned from northern Greece, where I read, in the International Herald Tribune, your piece on my redundancy. It was a nice job, and I am flattered that you thought my analysis not only correct but also worthy of recounting.
    By the way, I did not include the bracketed “that” as an intentional jab—it was just the way I was accustomed to using the verb “differentiate.” Honi soit qui mal y pense. The Latin etymology was likewise not an intentional parody: I happen to think it useful, and knew that you, of all people, would not consider it out of place. You were correct, however, that my reference to “off-the-cuff thoughts” was (shall we say?) something of an exaggeration.
    I hope you will not think it ungrateful if I observe that you are wrong about my use of indicative “was” instead of the subjunctive “were.” “Were” would have been appropriate if my sentence had read “my reference ‘differentiating [that],’” etc. In fact, however, I wrote, “can be absolved”—and that takes a “was.”
    Justice Antonin Scalia
    Supreme Court of the United States
    Washington, D.C.
    Philosophers have made the distinction you and Justice Scalia seemed to be striving for when you discussed whether “benevolent compassion” was tautologous. They differentiate between defining characteristics and accompanying characteristics. All elephants may be