I have been alarmed to watch the way the word “community” has been used to fabricate groups that don’t seem to have any geographical or social or ideological group coherence. In conservative thinking, the word “community” is as important as any save “tradition.” It’s the concept undergirding federalism, family values in the truest sense, and the “communitarian” impulse to let people run their own affairs. Unfortunately “community” is so badly abused these days in public language that it is probably time to accept that it just needs to be junked.

Perhaps the most common usage we hear in politics is the amorphous “black community.” Also popular is the “intelligence community.” Perhaps this is in deference to a better organized information-sharing apparatus post-9/11, and America’s many intelligence agency employees may in fact commune more than they once did. But I even heard a reference, this week, to a belief held by the Iranian “intelligence community.” Iran can do some sophisticated spying, but surely this is pushing it.