On the Right

SOME set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on.

I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises, refused to acknowledge such a creature as a “bombardier.” Right, “bombardier” would have meant “bomber pilot.” The pacifists were prepared to use the word bombardier, but only as the flying instrument-an airplane from which one drops bombs. Since no such creature as a pilot who drops bombs from such an airplane was acknowledged to exist, the schoolmen of the academy at first refused to authorize that use of the word.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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SOME set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on.

I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises, refused to acknowledge such a creature as a “bombardier.” Right, “bombardier” would have meant “bomber pilot.” The pacifists were prepared to use the word bombardier, but only as the flying instrument-an airplane from which one drops bombs. Since no such creature as a pilot who drops bombs from such an airplane was acknowledged to exist, the schoolmen of the academy at first refused to authorize that use of the word.