Speech and the talking pictures

This essay examines the rhetoric of the Moral Majority, Inc., arguing that its appeal is a function of its romantic form. It suggests that romantic rhetoric invites auditors to participate in an idyllic world of simplified moral constructs, provides them with an opportunity to simultaneously elevate themselves above the morally imperfect world which surrounds them and remain an active part of that world, and establishes criteria for evaluating claims of truth and falsity which transcend concepts of empirical verifiability.