My niece Kelly and I have been working on a project called The Redundancy Watch, the result of our family's obsession with the English language. In collecting examples of redundancies in common and sometimes not-so-common use, I found this from Herbert Hoover:
It is to politicians that we owe such redundancies as "our freedom and liberty," "our country and our nation," "justice and fairness," "avert and prevent" and on and on, but I suppose we must be grateful to those who employ them for thereby signaling to the rest of us that they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
“To you who are planning ahead programs of work for earnest groups of organized women, I strongly commend study of the new data, new ideas, and methods and plans envisaged by this most exhaustive conference on housing and homes. … In this depression as never before the American people have responded with a high sense of responsibility to safeguard and protect the children...”
Herbert Hoover
Radio Address to the Women's Conference on Current Problems
September 29, 1932
In 1932, things were not going well for Herbert Hoover, nor for anyone else, for that matter. Harried to distraction (and inaction) by the Depression, by Franklin Roosevelt, by the rise of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan, by a world teetering on the brink, Herbert Hoover chose to talk about the family.
He would not be the last flailing politician to do so. Whenever actually addressing a national problem proves to be beyond a politician’s ability, ideology, or pay grade, he will bombilate in the most general terms about the American family, extolling it as the backbone of the nation, or deploring its decline. Since the family is none of his particular business, it follows that he must wheeze mightily on his bagpipes to flatter us or alarm us, as the case may be, and it is in such huffery and puffery that redundancies take over.
In this example, planning ahead, housing and homes, and safeguard and protect are all very well, but we are especially taken by earnest groups of organized women, because God knows we have encountered some of those, and we admire the way our late president’s list of new data, new ideas, and methods, and plans hedges every bet. It is to politicians that we owe such redundancies as "our freedom and liberty," "our country and our nation," "justice and fairness," "avert and prevent" and on and on, but I suppose we must be grateful to those who employ them for thereby signaling to the rest of us that they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
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