There
should be no surprise that former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, who
played a role in launching the political career of Barack Obama, was found
among the street demonstrators in Chicago who succeeded in forcefully
disrupting and shutting down Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign
rally on March 11, injuring two police officers who were trying to maintain
order.
When
Trump proceeded to move to his next campaign stops in Ohio the following day,
he came before crowds and naturally addressed the previous night’s unfortunate
descent into violence, only to experience another attempt at
disruption. Four secret service agents raced to surround Trump after
something was thrown and someone attempted to rush the stage. What is going
on?
With
provocative and occasional unrestrained rhetoric, Trump can be polarizing
-- sometimes inviting a raucous response. But the real problem that gave rise to Trump is
intolerance and the soft tyranny of humorless political correctness that
envelopes communication and culture in America.
No one wants to admit it, but the seeds
of ideological control characteristic of totalitarian political regimes reside
predominantly in the Democrat Party and in its liberal constituencies that
dominate the knowledge, information and entertainment industries -- the
media, the universities, and Hollywood. And because of their leverage, these
institutions have a disproportionately large effect on the population at large.
Slowly, over the last few decades, but with accelerating pace in the Obama
years, the soul of America has been silenced by political correctness. And the
nation is weaker and more divided than ever.
It’s
time to connect the dots on the growing intolerance of the political left
in America. Recently, Forbes reported that of more
than 400 of America’s largest and most prestigious colleges and universities,
62% percent maintain policies that restrict a substantial amount of speech
protected under the First Amendment. Speech comes in many forms, but typically
what is banned is student speech that “feels offensive” or “demeaning” toward
groups and causes deemed politically correct.
On many campuses, students who question
secular progressive orthodoxies -- whether extreme environmentalism and climate
change, socialist economics, multiculturalism and accommodation of illegal
aliens or Islamists -- fear grade penalties, harassment, and outright
silencing. In effect, speech codes chill freedom of expression and the
competition of ideas. Worse, it turns out that speech codes driven by political
correctness foster coddled, weak-minded, and intolerant graduates --
ill-equipped for employment and citizenship in the marketplace diversity of
viewpoints that is the real world.
Intolerance
and political correctness that has subliminally debilitated public discourse
and debate has been working its way into government at an accelerated pace
since Obama took office. To “fundamentally transform America,” Obama’s stated
goal at the inception of taking office, his administration undertook a
concerted effort to institutionalize PC in the regulation of key areas of the
economy. Healthcare and banking were restructured following the passage of
Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, while the energy sector -- which is nearly 80% fossil
fuel reliant -- was targeted by Obama executive orders, which were carried out
by the EPA.
Even
after two different court rulings slapping down Obama and halted EPA actions on
emissions, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch picked up the PC mantle on
energy in an unprecedented assault on First Amendment protection of speech. Two
weeks ago, AG Lynch began actively exploring in conjunction with the FBI, the
possibility of prosecuting so-called “climate change deniers.”
But
political correctness has even more immediate and deadly consequences when it
affects law enforcement, intelligence, defense, and national
security.
In
spite of Islamists having established an unparalleled record of terrorism --
some 20,000 assaults in the name of Islam since 9/11 -- the Defense Department
has come under the grip of PC, which has forced military training to delink
terrorism from Islam. Even after self-described “soldier of Allah” Nidal Hassan
killed 13 in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting spree, the Defense Department recorded
this incident as “workplace violence.” The DOD bureaucracy had almost no other
choice as it was then in the midst of an ongoing purge at West Point and the
Naval War College of all “vital references to Islamist ideology driving
terrorism or conflating terrorism with Islam.”
The
FBI followed suit in 2011 and systematically purged its counterterrorism
training manuals of some 900 pages that were considered offensive to Muslims.
The
2013 Islamist Boston Marathon bombers had high-risk profiles known by law
enforcement intelligence and could have been stopped, but for political
correctness. The December 2, 2015 ISIS-inspired San Bernardino massacre might
also have been prevented. A neighbor of the Islamist terrorist couple Tashfeen
Malik and Syed Farook revealed that in the weeks before the terrorist killing
spree, there had been a flurry of activity at their home -- with a multitude of
package deliveries and Middle Eastern individuals coming and going at all
hours. Yet that neighbor chose not to alert the police for fear of being labeled
racist or Islamophobic.
There
can be no doubt that political correctness puts lives in danger. The wonder is
that PC has been in ascendance for so long, and it is an irony of history that
it took an unconventional presidential candidate, Donald Trump, to break the PC
glass ceiling.
Regardless
of who becomes the Republican nominee, if the shield of political correctness
protecting the Democrat Party can continue to be exposed and shattered, the GOP
is likely to broaden its base, widen its majority, gain influence in the
culture, and be more successful in foreign policy and defeating ISIS and
radical Islamist jihad.
