Today’s political correctness is as dangerous as the military madness of the sixties: Democrats are infecting Congress, education, and diplomacy with a PC virus that’s weakening the USA. This is true, and the root cause is a belief the Left is just that right and those with different opinions or solutions are just that wrong.
Political Correctness is an attack upon free speech. Thank God an African-American, Ben Carson, dope-slapped Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) when she asked the HUD secretary to apologize for saying “big hairy men” might gain access to an Alaskan women’s homeless shelter. Carson replied, “This whole notion of political correctness [is] going to destroy our nation.” His common-sense view is battered and abused women should not have to sleep next to biological men who self-identify as women.
But – – he added, “political correctness [makes] people afraid to express themselves; so, coming in the back door, it actually suppresses the First Amendment. If everybody has to filter everything they say [or] listen carefully [for] words and not meaning, what do we become as a society and as a people? We’ve got to nip it in the bud before everybody is just silent…we have to be more mature than that.” Bravo, Dr. Carson!
Political Correctness is an attack upon education. Thank God my grandson is not being raised in Seattle, where a director of ethnic studies, Tracy Castro-Gill, is creating a math curriculum that will focus on “power and oppression” and the “history of resistance and liberation” (source: Education Week). Did you even know white Europeans had appropriated math to oppress people of color?
Her social-justice guidance makes students “identify the inherent inequalities of the standardized testing system used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color [and know] how math has been used to exploit natural resources [and] dictate economic oppression.” And I thought native Americans counted “many moons” before Columbus, and Kayan women calculated neck rings in the 11th century. Who knew Harvard wanted Asians to suck at Calculus?
Seattle should help put “persons of color” into competitive classrooms, where competition makes them better, and the NEA should create better STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) curricula in “communities of color.” Math skills are essential and don’t improve by knowing Greeks appropriated math from the Phoenicians and Italians appropriated gun powder from the Chinese.
Political Correctness is behind a know-it-all bureaucracy. In the rarified air of US diplomatic circles, it was politically incorrect for President Trump to dig into 2016 Democratic dirt and appoint the free range rooster (Giuliani) to circumvent State Department experts. Wrong! It’s politically incorrect to elevate a “bureaucrat consensus” over an elected president. Adam Schiff (D-CA) can trot out 100 expert witnesses to show an interagency consensus, but that is neither ethically nor constitutionally relevant.
The history of inter-agency consensus is sad. In 1913, an interagency consensus concluded black Americans were not qualified to work as DC bureaucrats. In 1942, an interagency consensus doubted Japanese-American loyalty. In 1964, an interagency consensus thought losing the Vietnam War meant global communist hegemony. In 2002, an interagency consensus believed Iraq had Yellowcake uranium. Wrong then – and wrong today.
Colonel Alexander Vindman claims: “In the spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.” His experience and expertise had Vindman “concerned by the call” and doubting “it was proper,” but he wasn’t elected by 63 million voters to change the way Washington runs. Vindman has an opinion but not the plenary power of the President to conduct foreign policy as he sees fit (per the constitution).
The American Left promotes a dangerously subjective worldview that holds individual expression is subject to institutional control, foreigners have the same legal standing as citizens, and international treaties matter more than US elections. But – attacking Dr. Carson’s rights, making math a social experiment, and co-managing presidential diplomacy are not in the average American’s interest. Ms. Wexton, Ms. Castro-Gill, and Mr. Vindman can push their narrow world views, but 330 million other Americans can beg to differ.