An obsession with polite or correct public language is a sign that communication is in decline. It means that the process and exercise of power have replaced debate as a public value. The citizen's job is to be rude — to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. Politics, philosophy, writing, the arts — none of these, and certainly not science and economocs, can serve the common weal if they are swathed in politeness. In everything which affects public affairs, breeding is for fools.
—John Ralston Saul, Canadian essayist, novelist, and critic, The Doubter's Companion, 1994