Suddenly everyone is having a "conversation." The word has come of age. I see it bowing and scraping on the opinion pages and TV talk shows three or four times a day. Its formulaic sidekick is the equally irksome "if you will," beloved of Wolf Blitzer, John King and other TV correspondents. "If you will" is something between a sheeplike cough and a verbal tail-wag, a signifier of decorum, itself a prime ingredient of the "national conversation."

"National conversations" are clubby affairs. Their prime purpose is to exclude the unconversational, meaning intellectual or verbal excess--above all, unseemly questioning of the essential functionality of the existing system. Indeed, I began to keep an eye out for the term a few years ago, when I read a column in which some rabble-rouser was haughtily blackballed as most definitely not being part of the national conversation.

It's possible that the "national conversation" got its start as an effort to dignify the interactions of the "chattering classes," a phrase that had its origin as a right-wing snarl in the Thatcher years. Real men and real women didn't chatter. They moved briskly forward with the business of "governance," yet another irksome locution.

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