Abraham Lincoln and the lost art of persuasion

It is all too easy to bemoan the abysmal rhetoric of our times. Strident and shrill, caustic and toxic, illogical and semiliterate — we ransack the thesaurus to describe its depths.

One recent study charts the rise of "conflict entrepreneurs" in Congress — national legislators whose desire for greater media visibility spurs their frequent resort to personal insult. Profanity and vulgarity from another branch of government is on the rise as well. All too often, we shower upon these conflict-mongers precisely the attention they crave.

As troubling as all this is, the real problem with much of today's rhetoric isn't just that it's awful. It's that it isn't rhetoric at all...