I found Angelo M. Codevilla’s article about Antonio Gramsci, the Gramscian takeover of the media and education, and political correctness at the Claremont Review of Books interesting even if he goes a bit overboard at times. You may, too, particularly if you don’t know anything about Antonio Gramsci.
So, for example, I think that he goes overboard in his identification of progressivism with communism. I think that as a matter of historical fact in the United States progressivism arose as a strain of liberalism and that today’s descendants of liberalism are libertarianism and progressivism, libertarianism more concerned about freedom and progressivism about producing social good.
How can a very diverse society maintain any cohesion? How can it function? The answer based on the values of the Enlightenment was through tolerance and moderation. The present answer, by enforcing standards that preclude contradictory expression, has a basic failing: it can’t work. There are limits to how rapidly societal norms can change without chaos and any system that is self-organizing but not self-limiting requires being able to change societal norms an unlimited number of times at unlimited speed.
In his wonderful essay, “Defining Deviancy Down”, Pat Moynihan reminded us of several things. One was that for a society to exist, it must have certain norms and those must be knowable:
In one of the founding texts of sociology, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Emile Durkheim set it down that “crime is normal”. “It is”, he wrote, “completely impossible for any society entirely free of it to exist.” By defining what is deviant, we are enabled to know what is not, and hence to live by shared standards.
The other was that the rights of individuals and the needs of society required an equilibrium:
Liberals have traditionally been alert for upward redefining that does injustice to individuals. Conservatives have been correspondingly sensitive to downward redefining that weakens societal standards. Might it not help if we could all agree that there is a dynamic at work here?
Instead of “liberal” I believe today we would say “libertarian”. Does anything today correspond to Dr. Moynihan’s characterization of “conservatives”?
How can you read this stuff? As a term, political correctness has been so broadly used it is now meaningless. Any real discussion needs to start with a definition. Also, I think we need a corollary to Godwin’s Law overtime someone equates all liberals with communism.
Steve
You’ll note that your latter point was my criticism of the piece.
My own view is equating progressives with communists is a stretch. Intellectually, I think they’re Fabian socialists (which isn’t the same as being a communist). Pragmatically, I’m not sure what they believe other than voting for Democrats and hiring more people with professional degrees.
But equating today’s progressives with liberals is wrong, too. Hubert Humphrey and Pat Moynihan were liberals. William F. Buckley was a conservative. There aren’t any figures of either of their stripes these days.
As to your first point, this morning my wife and I were discussing political correctness and she made the same point as you did. I think that what Codevilla refers to is clear but defining his terms would have been helpful.
I’m with Steve, this guy’s piece is just gibberish. He’s a national security guy proving the point that clever at one field does not mean clever at another.
I tend to think of the early 20th century progressives as pro-capitalist, WASPish moralizers. Mostly what they were doing was trying to effect changes (like prohibition, legislation to moderate sexual excesses, minimum wages, public education, mental health care including eugenics) intended to make people better workers.
Marx would not recognize any of this as anything more than bourgeois rubbish. In some sense, today’s progressives are heirs to the originals, and in others they are the U.S. expression of European-style social-liberalism.
Just a couple of examples: who is advocating bans on sugar and fast-food? Who is advocating conditioning welfare benefits on drug tests?
I recognize that not everyone in the Democratic Party is advocating the first, and not everyone in the Republican Party is advocating the second, but these are both traditional progressive style policies as expressed in each.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!
I see the Fabian socialists as the British expression of Continental-style social-liberalism.
Yep. The OP author is straining a muscle trying to connect progressives with communism which just does not fly. This isn’t a top-down thing, PC is a bottom-up thing magnified by social media. Virtue-signaling did not come from the Left (and certainly not from Communists, good grief,) it is a pre-existing condition of homo sapiens.
There’s this obscure Judean philosopher who all the way back in the year 33 said, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”
Indeed. Virtue signaling is its own reward if smug self-satisfaction is what you want from life. Personally, I prefer cash.
Der Spiegel just had a piece addressing the topic of political correctness entitled Has Political Correctness Backfired In America?