Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg: When Words Fail: The Stilted Language of Tragedy: “In the wake of the attacks, though, official America needed something else: language that would reassert control of a world that had gotten terrifyingly out of hand. A high Victorian indignation serves that purpose well. It evokes the moral certainties of a simpler age, when the line between civilization and barbarism was clearly drawn, and powerful nations brooked neither insult nor injury from lesser breeds without the law. This may be the first war of the 21st century, as President Bush has said. But its rhetoric will be taken from the 19th.” LA Times