The most important article you’ll read today
Jan 27, 2015, 1:02 PM | Updated: 1:20 pm
Jonathan Chait over at New York Magazine absolutely kills it with his epic and beautiful take down of political correctness:
…[It] would be a mistake to categorize today’s p.c. culture as only an academic phenomenon. Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate. Two decades ago, the only communities where the left could exert such hegemonic control lay within academia, which gave it an influence on intellectual life far out of proportion to its numeric size. Today’s political correctness flourishes most consequentially on social media, where it enjoys a frisson of cool and vast new cultural reach. And since social media is also now the milieu that hosts most political debate, the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old. … In a short period of time, the p.c. movement has assumed a towering presence in the psychic space of politically active people in general and the left in particular. …
Political correctness makes debate irrelevant and frequently impossible.
If you read nothing else today (or this month, even), make it this piece.
h/t Dylan Byers.