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American Heroes Who Get No Credit by David Frum

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/12/opinion/frum-unsung-heroes/index.html?hpt=op_t1

In the third paragraph, the author uses language to emphasize how Americans would negatively view politicians who pushed preventative measures.  While describing a politician preparing for a terror attack such as September 11th, Frum says,  "It's very possible that they would have been laughed at as tedious people who invested ridiculous amounts of energy against a probably imaginary threat."  By using adjectives such as tedious, ridiculous, and imaginary, Frum clearly shows this politician as a mockery. Thus, he makes his point, such a politician would be a laughing stock, not respected, and unrecognized. 


The diction in Frum's essay also heavily impacts the meaning, specifically his choice of unnecessary adjectives that change the meaning of a sentence.  Frum points out that the politicians who get credit in the grand scheme are the ones that fix disasters.  He uses Rudy Giuliani as an example, "The politicians who act after disaster reap the gratitude of the nation, like Rudy Giuliani amid the rubble of New York City." Using the verb "reap" instead of a more common world, like "get", gives this quotation a different feel.  If you reap something you are taking it, not being given it.  This makes it seem that Giuliani wasn't openly offered the credit, but took it anyway.  This emphasizes that credit taken after a disaster isn't as deserving as credit given for preventing disaster.


Frum offers preventative solutions to past events, detailing how they would have been solved and could have significantly changed the course of history.  He suggests that certain preemptive actions could have prevented The Great Depression, "Suppose they had rapidly infused the banking system with emergency credit, gone off the gold standard when Britain did in 1931, and organized the mutual forgiveness of the enormous debts and reparations left over from World War I."   By detailing the possible fixes to The Great Depression, Frum shows that this changes would not have been widely accepted.  Forgiving debts might have been extremely controversial if done too soon, before the country realized how bad the economy was, just as many preventative measures would be today.  This furthers his point that some solutions may be unpopular, but that doesn't mean those solutions wouldn't work.