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A little more than 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of editing and writing a CliffsComplete volume on Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland. It was edifying, as the research I conducted led me directly back to the philosophers I had gleaned so much from in my college and literary reference book careers.

I learned from Carroll and the philosophers his book inspired and influenced the inexactitude of human language when compared to mathematics. Languages inherent inability to convey thoughts as clearly as mathematics opens the door to all types of intentional and otherwise charlatanry, which, when paired with a bent moral compass, becomes a toxic mixture. Regular readers of this fish wrap might concur.

Carroll, the nom de plume of Charles Dodgson, was a mathematician, and his childrens book serves as a light-hearted and entertaining tonic to, say, the dialectics of Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx wherein logic is jettisoned in favor of either subverting or reinforcing perceived power structures. Of course, Hegel and Marx werent alone when it came to flummoxing folk with their silver-tongued devilry.

Deceptive trickery endures to this day. In fact, it flourishes. The prevalence of logical fallacies employed by pundits and opinionmakers isnt shocking but is nevertheless disheartening. Carroll presents quite a few pertinent examples in his book. In Wonderland, Alice struggles to differentiate between saying what she means and her assertion that she means what she says, I wrote in my essay, Alice, wordplay, and the nature of language. Alice fails in both instances as pointed out by the Mad Hatter and White Rabbit in Chapter VII.

The character Alice can be forgiven her illogic due to her youthful misunderstanding of language and immaturity. Shes a work of fiction, created to entertain, and serve as a means by which Carroll could discuss the often-absurd nature of language as well as its shortcomings (among other things).

All this as prelude to the Wonderland-based U.S. Supreme Court rantings last week in this real estate. Recently weve been subjected to tiresome diatribes about democracy, which seemingly means any policy outcome favored by the author in question. Anything perceived to alter the status quo or challenge the progressive agenda is maligned as a threat to our democracy.

It must be reiterated we live in a 246-year-old republic rather than a democracy. Laws change all the time. Same with court rulings. Our Constitution has been amended and unamended, too, since it was ratified in 1789. Both Plessy v. Ferguson and Prohibition were tossed on the dust heap of history, which should be celebrated by each one of us as victories for democracy.

But Roe v. Wade? Somehow seeking to roll back this 49-year-old Supreme Court decision is tyranny and a threat to democracy? Methinks the pro-choice advocates doth protest too much. Heck, even the esteemed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared Roe a terribly considered ruling, however rock-solid her pro-abortion bona fides. Considering lawmakers had nearly a half-century to make and pass a law to codify the original SCOTUS ruling and didnt well cest la vie.

Further, removing the ruling of a previous federal court to send the final say on abortion back to the states is precisely what our democracy is about, by which I mean our system of federalism. How is top-down de-facto legislation from a Supreme Court majority based on entirely invented legal precedents anything close to democracy? Recall it was SCOTUS in January 1973 that trashed the November 1972 decision by Michigan voters to prevent the legalization of abortion.

It takes either sheer ignorance or a motivation to mislead readers into a Wonderland rabbit hole of obfuscations, dialectical errors, and logical dead ends based on a complete misrepresentation that actual democratic practices arent exactly tyranny and are, in fact, precisely the opposite.

Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist.

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Column: Charlatans and the Wonderland of democracy - The Morning Sun