Principles and Heresies

THE RHETORIC OF PHASE II

Constitutional and representative government is possible only when reasonable clarity and honesty of language makes clear and honest leadership possible. As Richard Weaver has brilliantly shown in The Ethics of Rhetoric, distortion of the public language, the public rhetoric, of a society perverts the ethics of its leadership and erodes the foundations of free and ordered government. When words are used not to draw from principled grounds the reasons for, and effects of, a proposed action, but to distort and conceal those reasons and effects, because of the hidden motivations of leaders, then leadership becomes demagogy and democracy is on the road to dictatorial tyranny.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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THE RHETORIC OF PHASE II

Constitutional and representative government is possible only when reasonable clarity and honesty of language makes clear and honest leadership possible. As Richard Weaver has brilliantly shown in The Ethics of Rhetoric, distortion of the public language, the public rhetoric, of a society perverts the ethics of its leadership and erodes the foundations of free and ordered government. When words are used not to draw from principled grounds the reasons for, and effects of, a proposed action, but to distort and conceal those reasons and effects, because of the hidden motivations of leaders, then leadership becomes demagogy and democracy is on the road to dictatorial tyranny.