'Politicalaction involves mental vulgarity," wrote Michael Oakeshott in 1939, "not merely because it entails the concurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the false simplification of human life implied in even the best of its purposes." Economist Arnold Kling says something similar in "The Three Languages of Politics."

Mr. Kling's three "languages" are ways of talking about politics and government, and they align roughly with the progressive, conservative and...