The Betrayal of Language

Extract

The main issue I wish to raise here is not that the rhetoric of recent discussion of foreign policy (which was petulant from the first.teach-in) became outrageously reckless and uncivil. It is, rather, that emotion- laden speech too often contains a category-mistake or wrongly uses a term. The first betrayal in moral and political discourse is always a betrayal of the language through which men seek understanding. It is not the fury of disagreement, though no doubt the former fuels the latter.