ABSTRACT
Words are there to carry ideas, but only in small part: they also serve to bear the burden of needs, moods, purposes, and tactics. If in the beginning was the word, then people have known from time immemorial that words can confuse and deceive, that language can enlighten but also darken meanings. George Orwell's famous essay dealt only with the political confusions of the English language; all the other European tongues similarly tend to lose themselves in Babel of false formulas and pseudo-concepts. Words, needless to repeat, have always been used as weapons, and in the battles over the emergence of the “Neo-Conservative movement” there have been noisy clashes of verbal swordplay. Essentially it should refer to the group of American intellectuals who have so identified themselves. When semantical matters cross the Atlantic, chaos has come again. Nothing fails like success, as the succession cases in the Kremlin indicate.
