Over the last thirty years, political correctness has metastasized. Today, so many politically-correct assumptions have become mainstream that, as Tocqueville once predicted, they have narrowed our questions and our ability to question rather than actually tell us the exact answers to things. Is there a solution? Of course, but it will take immense time and work. The best thing the non-politically-correct have on their side is complexity and density of argument. What is politically correct has become so by lackluster thinking. It can be demolished, easily, but it will take time to undo all that has been done.

Over the last thirty years, political correctness has metastasized. Today, so many politically-correct assumptions have become mainstream that, as Tocqueville once predicted, they have narrowed our questions and our ability to question, rather than actually tell us the exact answers to things.

Over the last decade, it has become normal for students, professors, and the public at large to think of Western civilization as a term meaning, covertly and not so covertly, white supremacy or the mere history of white people. In many circles today, well beyond the intelligentsia, it has become commonplace to sneer when Western civilization is mentioned, as if we’re really all in on the secret. Too clever. Too clever, by far.

Undoubtedly, these attacks—often known broadly as political correctness—stem from the Maoist and the New Leftist infiltration of Western society in the 1960s. Unlike the Stalinists and the Old Left, the New Left—often the actual biological children of the Old Left, a.k.a. “Red Diaper Babies”—understood that Marxist economic determinism had failed time and again, especially in a society as abundantly wealthy as that of America (even during the Great Depression, the economy continued to persevere, if only half-heartedly). Rather than rely on the supposed inevitable Marxist dialectic of history, the New Left understood that it must change things culturally if it were to have any real influence at all. As opposed to leading labor unions, they understood they must play the long game, hiding out in institutions that matter culturally, especially those in education and religion. The long game told them to ignore the present generation and begin to train the upcoming and forthcoming generations. By the early 1980s, the New Left controlled much of academia (and the public schools, K-12).

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