Unlearn “Newspeak”

If our language is inane and empty, our thoughts will be inane and empty too.  Garbage in, garbage out.  My students write badly not because teachers in high school never made them write papers.  They have written plenty of papers -- far too many, in fact.  They have absorbed the Newspeak and cannot rid themselves of it. They do not need to learn a second language.  They need to learn their own language, in all its richness.  The only way to do that is to read good books, books written before the current rage of Newspeak.

Anthony Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, pg. 27-28