Politics has always been three-quarters talk, and not to know [how?] to use the current vocabulary of politics is a serious hindrance to anyone who, either as an amateur or as a professional, wishes to participate in the activity. The language of politics is the language of desire and aversion, of preference and choice, of approval and disapproval, of praise and blame, of persuasion, injunction, accusation and threat. It is the language in which we make promises, ask for support, recommend beliefs and actions, devise and commend administrative expedients and organize the beliefs and opinions of others in such a manner that policy may be effectively and economically executed; in short, it is the language of every-day, practical life.
(Michael Oakeshott, "The Study of 'Politics' in a University: An Essay in Appropriateness," in his Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, new and expanded ed. [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991], 184-218, at 206 [essay first published in 1962])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 