Sublime

subjects who see the world as a threatening and dangerous place tend to be more politically conservative.

When you trash the opposition, you simultaneously demean yourself. The best warrior is a happy warrior. Accentuate the positive . . . eliminate the negative. Negative definitely works, but a solid positive message will triumph over negativity.

When the figure of the buffoon becomes central to public life, the problem is not only that they say foolish things but also that everything they touch becomes foolish, including—especially—the powerful language we need to talk about them and what they are doing.

What distinguished libertarians from mainstream pro-business Republicans—Mailer’s parade of delegates in Miami Beach—was their pure and uncompromising idea. What was it? Hayek: “Planning leads to dictatorship.” The purpose of government is to secure individual rights, little else.

Bad English, whether to sell products or politicians, is abstract and clichéd—designed for the ear but not the intellect. Good English is concrete and alive—and at the same time informative and memorable.

NatCen Social Research’s British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey is widely regarded as the gold standard for surveys of public views about a variety of social topics including attitudes towards health and social care.

He had a plan for how to turn a public relations disaster and a crime against the Palestinian people into a public relations bonanza. It was a tried-and-true plan; it worked even more effectively this time than it had in the past.

Ur-fascism employs “an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax,” Eco added, “in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Les croyances politiques de Bernays étaient consternantes. Il était partisan d’une sorte de « fascisme light » : un gouvernement autoritaire, mais sans les calories vides du génocide. Il estimait que les masses populaires étaient dangereuses et devaient à ce titre être contrôlées par un État fort. Il admettait toutefois que les dictatures sanguinai