Why You Can't Stay the Course. Not in English, Anyway

Fantastic Op-Ed from the Times gets right to the linguistic reasons the Bushies and the country are in such big trouble.

We love Lakoff's understanding of metaphors as moral motivators, and his implicit point that in absence of meaning, political language becomes policy. Read the piece, but here's the golden arrow:

“Stay the course” was for years a trap for those who disagreed with the president’s policies in Iraq. To disagree was weak and immoral. It meant abandoning the fight against evil. But now the president himself is caught in that trap. To keep staying the course, given obvious reality, is to get deeper into disaster in Iraq, while not staying the course is to abandon one’s moral authority as a conservative. Either way, the president loses.