Where and when did “Political Correctness” originate?
Well, if one believes Bill Lind, “the name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip…”
Further in his essay, however, Lind dates the origins of Political Correctness back to the Vietnam War — “the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement” — but stretching back to the Political Correctness of cultural Marxism where
…certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be “victims,” and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.
Lind also calls Political Correctness “the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology, “and adds, “PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.”
Lind wrote and spoke about this back in 2000, when he also said:
Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.
Sounds familiar?
Of course it does, because 15 years later yet another demagogue is using the anti-PC meme as an excuse — a justification — to launch some of the most “offensive…insensitive…racist, sexist… homophobic” diatribe our senses and sensibilities have been exposed to in years.
But wait.
When did Political Correctness really originate and is it really all that evil?
In a recent column at the Washington Post, Danielle Allen traces the origins of Political Correctness to a 1793 Supreme Court decision, Chisolm v. State of Georgia, by James Wilson, a lead author of the Constitution and she sees it in a much different and better context:
As a member of the Constitutional Convention, Wilson determinedly argued that the Founders of 1776 had erected a government based on the people, not the states. He is the reason the Constitution begins, “We the People.” In Chisolm, he builds on that idea to propose that we should celebrate not “the United States” but the “People of the United States.” Only the latter expression was “politically correct,” he argued. We ought, he said, to raise toasts to the “People of the United States” as the true object of our efforts and affections.
Allen adds:
To be politically correct, in his argument, was to understand the new project of self-governance properly. Why did he emphasize “the People,” rather than “States”? He continues: “A State I cheerfully fully admit, is the noblest work of Man: But, Man himself, free and honest, is, I speak as to this world, the noblest work of God.” His phrase, the “People of the United States,” was politically correct because it captured the right way of thinking about the relationship between the people and its government.
But back to the leading GOP presidential candidate who would replace the “Political Correctness” of compassion, tolerance, equal justice and opportunity and other core American values with the barbarism of “taking out” the families of our enemies; with the heartlessness of mass deportations of millions of men, women and children; with the cruelty of shutting our doors to refugees and to those of a different religion; with the prejudice and bigotry against those of a different skin color, ethnic origin, sexual orientation or even gender.
This is what Allen says about Donald Trump:
Given the poll numbers for the leading Republican candidate, it appears that the problem is with us, the people, and not with this or that candidate. Wilson was right. We, the people, are the foundation of democratic government, and the quality of our government stands or falls with us.
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If we are not up to the job of choosing our leaders judiciously, consistent with the core values of our form of government, we will lose our chance at public happiness. We, the people, can cure ourselves of our incipient barbarism only as we have done it before: by calling it out, contesting it and working hard for alternatives.
I would only add to that, thank God most Americans still have the guts and the principles to be Politically Correct in the face of this onslaught on everything that has made America truly great.
CODA: At the risk of being both Politically Correct and ambiguous — but, nevertheless, very sincere — let me wish our readers a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Danielle Allen is a political theorist at Harvard University and a contributing columnist for The Post.
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