Below are excepts from a speech entitled Political Rhetoric and the National Conscience by Ravi Zacharias. I thought that there might be some relevance here .......
........ "Too many words, not enough ideas."
........ As biting as those words seem, they reflect what many of US have felt at the end of a speech or lecture, or for that matter, a sermon. This is a readily identifiable sentiment, I might add, for we are at a time in our nation's history when we are condemned to hear political rhetoric crowded and clouded by words ad infinitum, ad nauseam. It is the price we pay for free speech in search of ideas that are worth pursuing. As one whose living is intrinsically tied to proclamation, I shall not come down too hard on those with whom I have at least one aspect in common, i.e. word usage.
But I do want to raise the crucial issue of meaning behind the words. .....
........ I knew something was wrong, radically wrong, systemically wrong, ..................... the modern malady in the political arena is one of a fundamental contradiction—there is an unblushing moralizing on politics and a shameless politicizing of morality. Just think about that statement and it becomes evident that it may well be the quicksand of contemporary wordsmiths as they smother us into moral suffocation.........
........ You may have noticed a trend in university curricula. Once there was a discipline called theology; now they call it religion. The reason is plain. Theology begins with God, religion with man. The same dethroning has taken place with ethics. In our "salvation by survey" society, values are now defined with fluidity, never finding a level except in each individual mind. Words flow in speeches, punctuated by "values" they have no point of reference, and hence, no possibility for debate............
......... But after all the verbose moralizing on politics has run its course, there comes the acid test when specific moral issues come before US as adjudicators. And masterfully, each issue becomes politicized as the wordsmiths pounce on the words like predators determined to mangle and spit out the remains.
Alas! What a bleeding has taken place.
It is not so much the death of God as it is the death of conscience.
