Indeed, language is essential. You are describing something more than merely language, but about meeting on value systems.

Let us examine the Muslim ban, for example. If your value system says that people have a moral obligation to help anybody in need, irrespective of the potential harm to one’s self, you are appalled by the ban. But if you are debating with someone who feels that their personal safety is a premium that takes precedence over helping people in need, that argument has no merit. And screaming at them that they are “evil or selfish” is not only untrue, (because in a moral sense, the value of protecting one’s self over helping others is an equally moral perspective), but it is counterproductive. It only serves to create further division and thereby deafen your own voice from offering anything useful because you have induced the other side to tune you out.

A far more useful approach is to shift the debate to an argument that is compelling to the alternate perspective based on their own values. Like a constitutional basis. An argument that condoning the President’s right to disregard the Constitution, opens a pandora’s box of potentially terrible results is far more compelling. It is essentially saying, of you value protecting yourself so greatly, why are you not concerned that sanctioning a President’s ability to wield that type of power will inevitably fly back in your face one day. If not under Trump, then under a different President ten years from now.

That is a form of advocacy for your position which is infinitely more compelling and has an immeasurably stronger likelihood of being persuasive.