Remember when polite society treated a politician's use of the word "evil" as a sign that the old boy was dangerously lacking upstairs?

We saw it in 1983, when Ronald Reagan famously used the word in a speech to describe the Soviet empire. What a rube! New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis spoke for the smart set when he wondered what Soviet leaders must think: "What confidence can they have in the restraint of an American leader with such an outlook?"

We...