Takeaways from Jonathan Chait’s Brave Essay on Political Correctness

If you haven’t yet read Jonathan Chait’s “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” go do that now.

Are you back?  Okay.  This New York Magazine article breaks down some of the biggest problems we have in society.  I’m not going to attempt to build on Chait’s commentary, but I do think it will be helpful to isolate what all of us should learn from the piece.

• Ideological purity is more important to non-liberal liberals than ideas.  The piece begins with a description of what happened to Omar Mahmood, a U of M student who had the temerity to write a brief article about the problems that have been introduced by P.C. Culture.  Mahmood was harassed in the interest of protecting what non-liberal liberals feel are privilege-challenged minorities and…you know, people like Omar Mahmood.
• “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie” is a thing.  That’s right.  Non-liberal liberals are campaigning against free speech and skate dangerously close to terrorism apologia.
• The mainstream media feeds on this outrage culture.  Literally.  They make lots of money based upon this stuff.  They’re not going to undermine their own cash cow.  (Or even allow meaningful dissent.)
• There’s a chilling effect that keeps critics silent.  Even a woman and feminist as strong as Hanna Rosin has self-censored herself in an attempt to avoid the abuse she receives when she expresses an idea that non-liberal liberals don’t like.
• “Mansplaining” and “cisplaining” and the other “-splaining”s are silencing tactics.  The origin of an idea has no bearing on the validity of an idea.
• Ideas are often confused with action.  When a professor steals a protester’s sign, it’s a reaction to “microaggressions.”  The REAL problem, of course, was the protester demonstrating her ideological impurity.
• Non-liberal liberals are hurting the liberal movement and the country.  The Republican Party has been in trouble for a long time because they have moved so sharply to the right.  The silencing tactics employed by non-liberal liberals are precipitating the same slide to the extreme.  President Obama is barely a liberal.  Elizabeth Warren–a woman to the right of FDR–is the most liberal Democratic candidate we have…  Will Democrats be hurt by infighting that splits the left-wing base because we’re wasting time on these “microaggressions” instead of the real issues that confront us all?