When language dies, nations follow soon after
As political terms lose all meaning and elite contempt for citizens grows, the fundamental question remains whether America can restore the civic virtue that once made it worthy of love
Edmund Burke’s England was indeed lovely, and his wisdom about our capacity for love of country seems cruelly prophetic today. When the Anglo-Irish statesman penned Reflections on the Revolution in France, he understood that a nation’s character—its “distinct system of manners” —must undergird any lasting affection for the homeland. Yet here we stand, citizens of a republic whose vast beauty cannot disguise its withered soul.
The modern American condition is most clearly revealed in our degraded political vocabulary. When every political disagreement becomes “fascist,” for example, we witness not merely semantic inflation but the collapse of serious discourse itself.
Consider the scholarly consensus: Stanley Payne, the foremost authority on European fascism, observed in his seminal 1980 work, Fascism: Comparison and Definition, that “fascism is probably the vaguest of contemporary political terms”. Ernst Nolte developed his “fascist minimum” —antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, and totalitarian aims.
Paul Gottfried, editor of Chronicles, notes that fascism “now stands for a host of iniquities that progressives, multiculturists, and libertarians all oppose, even if they offer no single, coherent account of what they’re condemning.”
The absurdity reaches its apex when Hollywood scribes have baseball strikeouts declared “fascist,” like Crash Davis did in Bull Durham.
What about the black-clad urban vandals calling themselves “Antifa” torching American cities while claiming to fight fascism? These costumed revolutionaries, responsible for billions in property damage, have transformed anti-fascism into a performance of adolescent rebellion.
As former soccer star Alexi Lalas observed, this “strange self-loathing of country” manifests across cultural sectors—music, fashion, politics—wherever Americans have learned to despise the civilization that shelters them.
The weaponization of “fascist” as a political cudgel reached its nadir during the Dobbs decision, when returning abortion law to the states—the very essence of federalism—was branded authoritarian. Here we witness the inversion Burke warned against: legitimate constitutional processes become tyrannical while actual lawlessness masquerades as resistance.
This linguistic corruption serves a deeper purpose within what Michael Rechtenwald calls the “welfare-warfare state.” Writing in Chronicles, the former NYU professor and 2024 Libertarian presidential candidate identified the vicious cycle that sustains our national decline:
Social welfare only increases that which it putatively aims to eradicate: poverty, illness, homelessness, and so on. This is both logically deducible and empirically verifiable. Meanwhile, social welfare feeds state power and enables its warfare by placating those it disempowers, both the payers and the payees of the state’s pretended largesse.
The political class requires this manufactured crisis of language because it obscures their fundamental betrayal of the common good. When a failed presidential candidate branded half the electorate a “basket of deplorables” —calling them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic” —before labeling them “irredeemable” bigots, she revealed the contempt our ruling class holds for ordinary Americans.
This was no gaffe but calculated cruelty, repeated across multiple venues as a deliberate strategy to dehumanize political opposition.
The more profound tragedy lies not in the elite’s hatred—that was always predictable—but in the response it provokes. Too many Americans have internalized this contempt, becoming active participants in their own cultural demolition. They mistake submission to fashionable causes for moral sophistication, trading their birthright for the fleeting approval of those who despise them.
Yet Burke’s insight cuts both ways. If character corruption makes love of country impossible, then character restoration becomes the prerequisite for national renewal. This requires what Rechtenwald calls “principled opposition” —the courage to reject the welfare-warfare state’s seductions and reclaim the habits of self-governance that once made America lovely.
The path forward demands what previous generations called civic virtue: the willingness to shoulder responsibility for our communities rather than outsourcing our duties to distant bureaucracies. It means choosing the difficult work of local engagement over the easy pleasure of national outrage.
Most importantly, it requires recognizing that the corruption of our public language reflects the corruption of our private character—and that both can be restored by citizens willing to speak truth in their own neighborhoods.
Burke understood that civilizations die from within long before external enemies deliver the fatal blow. There is a stark choice remaining: restore the loveliness that merits love, or watch the country become unworthy of either affection or its children’s inheritance.
The hour grows late, but it is not yet midnight.
Reclaim America’s Promise—Starting with Your Education
After chronicling the corrosion of our public language and the decay of civic virtue, it’s clear that real renewal begins at home—with each of us building a stronger future for our families and communities.
A college education isn’t just a personal milestone; it’s a restoration of the habits of responsibility and self-governance that Edmund Burke celebrated in his “distinct system of manners.” But rising tuition costs and confusing scholarship deadlines too often stand between bright young patriots and the opportunity to lead our nation forward.
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That vision isn’t a pipe dream—it’s within reach.
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"...character restoration becomes the prerequisite for national renewal."
Yes. This. We heal one individual at a time, one family at a time, one neighborhood at a time.
I'm reminded of that "heat map" of concern that so radically delineates properly aligned hierarchies of concern from pathological ones.
(https://ifunny.co/picture/liberals-conservatives-heatmaps-indicating-highest-moral-allocation-by-ideology-study-fjVxXG0BC)