As the U.S. turns to the 2024 presidential election, all democracy-loving Americans should be alarmed about the rise of authoritarian rhetoric — a growing amount of it now employed by American political representatives. In 1939, the cultural critic Kenneth Burke issued similar warnings. In “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle,” published in the Southern Review, Burke admonished against democracy-loving Americans uncritically accepting what he derisively called the rhetorical “remedies” offered by authoritarians like Adolf Hitler, and he called for diminishing the damage such rhetoric unleashes. Burke’s article implored Americans to reject authoritarian tendencies in American political discourse wherever and whenever they...