President George W. Bush often speaks about the "goodness" of America and about the "evil" of various world tyrannies. Is this language meaningful -- or is it, as many critics both at home and abroad contend, empty and sanctimonious rhetoric?

A strong case can be made that the very fact that an American president refers to America as a good country and speaks about a standard of good and evil is itself a compelling argument on behalf of America's essential goodness.

How so? Isn't such rhetoric just mere words?

Not at all. The rhetoric that leaders use to describe their nations tells you a great deal about those nations. And no other nation's leaders use this goodness terminology nearly as often as American leaders (of both political parties) do.

That this rhetoric is largely confined to American leaders may be surprising to most Americans, as they probably believe that other national leaders use similar rhetoric. But it does not surprise foreigners. A leading French political scientist, quoted in The New York Times, accused Americans of speaking in terms of good and evil, something, he said, Europeans just don't do. And a German adviser to political leaders in his country told me the same thing on my radio show.

But if other leaders don't use such rhetoric, what language do they use?

The answer depends, of course, on which leaders and nations we are talking about. But whichever they are, their national self-description rarely includes the goodness rhetoric used by American leaders.

This is true regarding both tyrants and elected leaders.

Adolf Hitler did not speak about the German people's goodness, but about the racial superiority of the deutsche volk . Joseph Stalin spoke about economic and social "progress," about moving toward a communist utopia. Saddam Hussein spoke about Iraqi and Islamic "greatness," and increasingly relied on the religious language of "sacrifice for Allah." Many European national leaders rarely laud their countries, but instead speak of international law and European unity. And when they do express pride in their country, Europeans rarely invoke moral criteria. The French, for example, express pride in their culture -- their arts, museums, cuisine, etc. And, along with Germany, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, they regularly boast of their commitment to peace. But not to goodness or to fighting evil. Continued...