Political correctness sucks bigtime. My biggest objection to it is that the focus on the proper language and rectifying "power imbalances" and shit like that gets in the way of reasonable communication, especially if you're white, because anything you say can be interpreted as having a white privilege male power racist sexist subtext. And subtexts suck, even though I have a lot of fun with them.

Yet reasonable people and people of good faith try to be polite, and they have always tried to be polite. Politeness existed long before political correctness was invented, and of course that supplies the foot in the door for petty tyrants who inject their leftist poison into dialogue.

It's powerful poison, too.

As we have seen recently in the case of the New Black Panther Party, political correctness can derail justice itself. Richard Fernandez compared the dismissal of the voter intimidation case to the under-reported DC acquittal of three politically-powerful gay men in the torture/murder of a man in their townhouse.

...though it is theoretically irrelevant, it is probably unfortunate that J. Christian Adams, the Justice Department lawyer who resigned over the mishandling of the New Black Panther case, is white. In our politically correct world, it would have been far better had he been black, because just as those who are seeking justice for Robert Wone are themselves gay, the case against voter intimidation would have been immeasurably strengthened if the complainants had been persons of color.

The greatest damage that political correctness has inflicted on society is to make each of us forget that underneath the accidents of color, nationality and creed, that all of us are men. By dividing humanity into hyphenated buckets, each sequestered in its hate, the puppet masters have managed to set one against the other so thoroughly that the sharpers, wheeler-dealers and fixers can operate undisturbed. In a world where every one thinks of himself as white, black, gay, straight -- we have forgotten that the real distinction is between who holds power and who does not. Nothing else matters. The Black Panthers and the three men who are suspected of killing Robert Wone are not impotent underdogs. On the contrary, they wield far more power than we, in our normal lives, could ever dispose of. God grant we never meet them, for if we do, we meet them alone.

Why do you suppose the forces of political correctness are so in love with the word "empowerment"? The idea is to "empower" those they ultimately want to control, which is why the group empowerment is conditional in nature, with the power granted only to those members of the special hyphenated category who agree to adhere to the rules of identity politics. This invites those considered to be in the "oppressor" category to ape the identity politics meme and make counterclaims that they too are being oppressed and persecuted. (BTW, complicating the power issues in the Wone case is the ironic fact that the murder victim Robert Wone is an Asian American and was a close associate of the current Attorney General Eric Holder.... Had he been an unknown white man, I doubt we'd have heard of him at all.)

However, much as I detest political correctness and love to ridicule it, I am not sure that the conspiracy theory approach is the way to go:

The best way to combat political correctness is to expose it for what it really is-Cultural Marxism. Equally important in defeating this anti-Christian, anti-American worldview is to not comply with its mandates. Call homosexuality what it is-sin. Expose feminism for what it is-anti-family, anti-father. Expose tolerance as moral relativism and intolerance toward those who don't conform to their dictates of tolerance. Expose sensitivity training as an attempt to destroy freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Point out to your family and friends the consequences that cultural Marxism has had and is having on our faith, families, and freedoms.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revoltuion based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.

Toward this end, Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced Lukacs radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics. Gramsci's 'long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.

The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity. In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences. This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience (paired with personal accountability and responsibility) because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible.

And never mind that sex, drugs, rock and roll are as American as apple pie and helped bring down the Soviet Union. The fact is that by introducing the meme of "Democracy! Sexy! Whiskey!" our American GIs were actually sinister dupes of the Frankfurt School plot -- which they foisted off onto innocent and naive Iraqis.

So, I think the Cultural Marxist meme, while grounded in the reality that there were people who believed that sex drugs rock and roll and other forms of cultural rot would destroy America, is fundamentally flawed because it treats people like mindless automatons -- giving them no credit for having independent thoughts and desires for freedom of their own. Even those who don't believe in God (or those like me who reject the idea that God can be reduced to a book) are not given credit for their skepticism. They are told that their thoughts are not theirs, but they are victims of a brainwashing campaign cooked up by long-dead Communist Jews.

From a rhetorical standpoint, I think the implementation of the phrase "Cultural Marxism" mirrors the implementation of leftist phraseology like "Structural Racism," "Institutional Racism," "Environmental Racism," and yes, even "Cultural Racism" because it conveniently facilitates leveling the charge of Marxism and Communism at people who are not Marxists or Communists, just as Structural, Institutional, Cultural and Environmental Racism conveniently facilitate calling people racists who are not racists.

This is not to deny that there were and are Marxists, or that there were and are racists. Nor is it to deny that these Marxist intellectuals believed that loosening of morals and abandonment of religion would pave the way towards Marxism, or that racists in fact deliberately sought to create self-enforcing institutions and systems that would keep minorities down. However, it is a quantum leap (as well as bad logic) to say that simply because something follows in time or is built upon something that went on in the past, that it is being dictated or controlled by it.

Just as people would have (and did, and do) enjoy sex and porn without Alfred Kinsey's help, people would have become atheists, agnostics, drug users, or gay had Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse never been born.

And just as I am perfectly capable of destroying myself without their help, so is Western culture. As Oscar Wilde famously observed (and not just the other day),

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Similarly, it is possible to have lived through actual attempts at Marxist indoctrination, to have taken part in some of the fun stuff that took place in the 60s and 70s, years later to succumb to self-indulgent psychedelic nostalgia, aggravated by a narcissistic, passive-aggressive sense of midlife "entitlement," and, yes, even to be polite to people -- all without being a victim or a dupe of Cultural Marxist political correctness.

As I say, political correctness sucks.

Which is why I consider it rather insulting to be told that I am helping the advancement of a political system to which I am unalterably philosophically opposed. I'd be about as happy being told I am a dupe of Osama bin Laden.

At the rate things are going, we'll all be reduced to being someone else's narrative.

And how I hate that.

I mean, if I can't be my own narrative, then what is the meaning of life?

* OTOH, if the idea is to oppose political correctness by any means necessary, I would submit that Mel Gibson makes that Brannon Howse guy look like a pussy!

MORE: Not to belabor the point, but another major problem with the Cultural Marxism, Frankfurt School argument is that by attributing to "leaders" (like Gramsci and Marcuse) the later actions of people who never heard of them, it gives the villainous leaders credit than they do not deserve, transforming dead men into powerful enemies who continue to do damage. Sexual hedonism, for example, was not Marcuse's idea, but he did try to glom onto what was going on in the 60s in an opportunistic manner. The slogan "MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!" is often attributed to him (even though there is no proof he coined it), and many conservatives have argued that he was a "leader" of young people who wanted sex, drugs, and rock and roll:

Marcuse argued for a widened experience of sexuality through the embrace of eros, in general, within polymorphous sensuality, fantasy, and the arts. In this he was a leading inspiration to the "Flower Children," the theme of "Make Love, Not War," and a great portion of the Rock music and drug culture of the age. While much of this movement ventured far beyond the bounds of Marcuse's own North-German upbringing, he was obviously pleased by the attention and remained sympathetic to the Movement.

Making them into his victims is illogical and condescending, and I think it borders on the delusional.

"I went to an orgy because a German philosopher said it was OK."

"I took LSD and copulated in the mud at Woodstock because Herbert Marcuse made me do it!"

Riiight.