Don't We Need a New Political Language?

Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation

Here's a modest proposal for improving national political discussion. Let's stop equating our opponents WITH famous dictators, their chief executioners, police apparatus, or ideologies. Let's declare a national ceasefire on "his (or her) view reminds me of..." -- fill in the blank: Hitler, Goebbels, Eichman, Stalin, Mao, the Gestapo, the Gulag, the KGB, etc.

She gives a long list of examples, to which I'll add this from Without a Doubt by Damon Linker in The New Republic, reviewing Catholic Matters by Richard John Neuhaus.

But how can we know, by what authority can we determine, which authority is the right authority? This is a significant problem for anyone who combines a longing to obey with a refusal to recognize as authoritative the traditions into which he happens to have been born.

Carl Schmitt, the political theorist who devoted a great deal of thought to this dilemma, determined that such men have no choice but to make an arbitrary yet resolute decision to obey some authority, any authority. Taking account of the options in Germany in 1933, Schmitt swore obedience to Hitler. Neuhaus, of course, makes an infinitely more respectable decision in favor of the Vatican.