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Showing Original Post only (View all)Paul Krugman- The New Political Correctness (Newspeak) [View all]
Remember the furor over liberal political correctness? Yes, some of it was over the top but it was mainly silly, not something that actually warped our national discussion.
Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which unlike the liberal version has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.
Thus, even talking about the wealthy brings angry denunciations; were supposed to call them job creators. Even talking about inequality is class warfare.
And then theres the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about immigration and ethnicity or environmental history becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, hell name his new course US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans. That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/the-new-political-correctness/