Whaddaya Mean "We", Paleface?

Freeman has a good post about the fallacy of the “ambiguous collective” http://freemanlc.blogspot.com/2006/02/ambiguous-collectives-other-statist.html , i.e. when folks refer to an undefined antecedentless pronoun like “we” or “they” in an argument, sometimes in order to effect a conflation of the state and society. An example might be a reference to “our forces”, “our interests” when discussing some governmental activity. I sometimes have been guilty of sloppiness in this regard myself, although I hope that I have not inadvertently reinforced any statist memes thereby. Consider my consciousness raised on this point.

We (me and some other people who might have had the same experience as me) are often called out on the use of the undefined “They”, as in “They have found a cure for something or other” or “They are at it again”. Perhaps we (me and everyone else who may wish to problematize statist memes) ought to call foul on the ambiguous collective fallacy whenever we (the same guys as before) encounter it.