Robert L. Ivie's essay, The Rhetoric of Bush's War on Evil, is surely the best thing I've read on the discourse and persuasive strategies of our 43rd president. There are so many trenchant observations in this critique, it will take several short posts to do justice to them. Needless to say, it is a hard-hitting polemic against, as well as warning about, Bush's brand of snake oil. Nevertheless, Ivie's analysis is subtle and balanced, careful to point out sharp distinctions between, as well as frightening similarities to, Hitler's <em>Mein Kampf</em>, the benchmark piece of propaganda from which the author takes his Burkean inspiration.