The great semanticist and one-time Republican senator from California, Samuel I. Hayakawa once remarked that language is thought in action. In fact, he authored a book about it called Language in Thought and Action. 

Hayakawa knew that words aren’t magical – but understood that others might. As the ninth president of San Francisco State University, he pulled the plug – literally – on a PA system during a left-wing rally during the Student Strike of 1968-69.  

Though as much as we’d love to, we can’t yank the wires out of a similar San Franciscan soapbox, the toxic tendrils of Tweets pumping poison into...