Dr. Jack Wheeler
October 30, 2014
Some of my favorite words in the English language are "collective nouns," the colorful names for groups of animals going back to the 15th century that every kid had to know to go hunting with his dad. Not knowing them was laughable ignorance.
We would laugh today if someone said a "herd of fish" instead of a school, or a "flock of cattle," instead of a herd or drove. We know it's a pride of lions, but it's a leap of leopards, a crash of rhinos, a shrewdness of apes, a skulk of foxes. Perhaps you've heard of a murder of crows or an exultation of larks, but it's an unkindness of ravens, an ostentation of peacocks, a bouquet of pheasants, a parliament of owls.
Collective nouns were applied to groups of people as well. We still call it a congregation of churchgoers, but it's an impatience of wives, a boast of soldiers, an impertinence of peddlers, an illusion of painters. I love the one for prostitutes: a flourish of strumpets.
It's a tremble of cowards. That certainly was the appropriate designation for the French-German Euroweenie portion of participants at the Paris conference I attended earlier this week.
It was a conference on Global Security organized by the French Ministry of Defense, the US Department of Defense, and NATO. It had a dual focus: on the threat of Russian aggression in Ukraine, and on cybersecurity.
Held in the King's Council Chamber of Les Invalides, among the 40 some attendees were ministers of defense and ambassadors from several countries, high level EU and NATO officials, Pentagon generals, and key executives from major defense and cybersecurity companies. I attended as the geopolitical strategist for one of the conference sponsors.
There was no press, and no attribution for anything said was permitted. Given that restriction, here is what happened.
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