the power of words

This idea, the absolutist idea of the state, seems to be very generally prevalent at the moment. The great majority of social philosophers and publicists treat it as a matter of course; not only in Europe, where some form of theoretical absolutism has always been more or less in vogue, but also in America, where the idea of government, as expressed officially in the Declaration, runs all the other way. Since my return here I cannot help noticing that the rank and file of Americans seem to be extremely well reconciled to the idea of an absolute state, for the most part on pragmatic or "practical" grounds; that is to say, having found the frying pan of a misnamed and fraudulent "rugged individualism" too hot for comfort, they are willing to take a chance on the fire. If only one is tactful enough not to name the hated names of Socialism, Bolshevism, Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Hitlerism, or what not, one finds no particular objection to the single essential doctrine that underlies all these systems alike -- the doctrine of an absolute state. Let one abstain from the coarse word slavery and one discovers that in the view of many Americans -- I think probably most of them -- an actual slave status is something that is really not much to be dreaded, but rather perhaps to be welcomed, at least provisionally. Such is the power of words.

This is from the article "Life, Liberty, and..." by Albert Jay Nock, which originally appeared in Scribner's in March 1935 and is now the introduction to Our Enemy, The State.