Anti-Climacus

RESEARCH SUGGESTION: for Dara (contra the claim that you can't do linguistic anthropology and do useful human-rights U.N. sort of things): look into variation in rhetoric and meaning between, say, authoritarian countries and democratic ones, and find patterns in the meanings behind what people say on the issue, and provide the most helpful means of negotiating across hostile languacultural (bwahahaha) boundaries. E.g. look at China's patterns of talking about human rights since Nixon launched detente, then compare that to their actions, and extrapolate therefrom more effective means of talking straight with PRC officials. Just a thought.