 From the Chronicle: If you really want to attack your opponents these days, you are best off  doing so in another language. When the editors of the religious  conservative magazine First Things determined in 1997 that the  left-wing activism of the U.S. Supreme Court had  made the American government illegitimate, they characterized it as a  regime, or, should I say, a régime. In choosing a French word,  they suggested that the American experiment in self-government had come  to an end. We can talk about a political “system” without raising  eyebrows. Régime, by contrast, as in ancien régime, connotes  a preliberal, European society characterized not only by arbitrary rule  but also by a corrupt aristocracy unworthy of holding on to its  unearned privileges.
From the Chronicle: If you really want to attack your opponents these days, you are best off  doing so in another language. When the editors of the religious  conservative magazine First Things determined in 1997 that the  left-wing activism of the U.S. Supreme Court had  made the American government illegitimate, they characterized it as a  regime, or, should I say, a régime. In choosing a French word,  they suggested that the American experiment in self-government had come  to an end. We can talk about a political “system” without raising  eyebrows. Régime, by contrast, as in ancien régime, connotes  a preliberal, European society characterized not only by arbitrary rule  but also by a corrupt aristocracy unworthy of holding on to its  unearned privileges.
Do foreign words express our politics better than English? Read this.
