I hate to say this, but I found this article absolutely terrible.
All of these "Martin Luther King IS ...", "George Washington WAS ...", etc. statements (form: Noun TO BE Adj.), really remind me of the arguments in favor of E-Prime and its associated benefits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime. The author likely intended this, of course, but reinforces exactly the same kind of thinking and tone in nearly every other sentence! (Do a quick scan for the verb to be)
Some might call E-Prime a fairly extreme philosophy / didactic tool, to be sure ;), but one shouldn't overlook that this article undermined its very own core point ("don't make a certain class of categorical / binary Aristotelian statements") through its very language (e.g., the phrase 'Now, because most arguments are rapid-fire debate-club style, sometimes it's still useful to say "Affirmative action isn't racist!"').
All of these "Martin Luther King IS ...", "George Washington WAS ...", etc. statements (form: Noun TO BE Adj.), really remind me of the arguments in favor of E-Prime and its associated benefits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime. The author likely intended this, of course, but reinforces exactly the same kind of thinking and tone in nearly every other sentence! (Do a quick scan for the verb to be)
Some might call E-Prime a fairly extreme philosophy / didactic tool, to be sure ;), but one shouldn't overlook that this article undermined its very own core point ("don't make a certain class of categorical / binary Aristotelian statements") through its very language (e.g., the phrase 'Now, because most arguments are rapid-fire debate-club style, sometimes it's still useful to say "Affirmative action isn't racist!"').