The legal and political spheres are essentially persuasive and therefore rhetorical in the right sense of the expression. However, on too many occasions the symbolism that surrounds legal and political discourses does not obey the ultimate purpose of oratorical art: to help practical reason to find the beautiful, the good or the just in society. A clear example of this are the populist discourses, so frequent today. Populist language, in essence, is incompatible with rhetoric because it tends to falsify the reality of things, the basis of prudence and therefore of practical reason. All political language must approach the people, but the line that separates it from the creation of a neo-language is sometimes thin. Norms, and discourses, must maintain a minimum of ontological connection with reality, if they do not want to configure a parallel meta discourse in which their own symbology does not respond to rational elements.