I don’t know if they still do it, but politicians used to talk about “the American way of life.” This can seem nothing but a piece of rhetoric. Something to say on the Fourth of July. Too vague to be meaningful.
Many years ago — like 25 — I read an item in the newspaper. (That dates it! A newspaper!) In California, a school district had canceled Friday-night football because of gang violence. Games would now be played at 4 in the afternoon, before dark.
I thought, “Ah: This is what one means, or can mean, by ‘the American way of life.’” As far as I was concerned, high-school football on Friday nights was an American rite, and an American right. And these thugs were taking it away from us. They were robbing us of the American way of life.
To hell with them. Crack down on them, hard, and enjoy football on Friday nights, the way God and our Founders intended it.
Today, we conservatives talk a lot about political correctness, and how the Left is undermining the country. What do we mean? It helps to get specific …
… and I was aroused by two items today in the Daily Caller, especially one of them. In Walla Walla, Wash., there is an institution called Whitman College. It is not named after Walt Whitman but after Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, a couple who were missionaries in the Pacific Northwest and were killed by Indians in 1847.
Until now, the school nickname has been the Missionaries. But missionaries are evidently deemed bad, so the nickname has to go. Until now, the college newspaper has been the Whitman Pioneer. But pioneers are bad, so the name will have to go.
Undoubtedly, there have been bad missionaries and bad pioneers. But some of the best, bravest, and most admirable people who ever lived have been missionaries. And pioneers.
What is happening at Whitman College is what some of us mean when we say that the Left is taking our country from us. Warping its meaning, turning truth on its head. Making day night, and night day.
The second item that caught my eye had to do with a sorority at Dartmouth: which has had to cancel its Kentucky Derby party, because the Kentucky Derby is bad.
No, it isn’t. It’s a pleasant tradition with funny hats and fast horses. It is not a cross burning, no matter how much people want it to be, and would will it to be.
Andrei Sakharov said he always wanted to talk about specific, flesh-and-blood political prisoners rather than “human rights.” Similarly, it’s probably helpful to talk about specific actions undertaken by the Left, rather than political correctness in general.
I have no doubt that young Americans are routinely taught that missionaries and pioneers were the functional equivalents of the Klan. This is a huge injustice to young people, the country, and the truth.
Hillary Clinton has taken a pledge never, ever to say “illegal immigrant.” She, and other Democrats, won’t say “All lives matter.” They won’t say “radical Islam.”
This is madness, and not harmless madness either. “Political correctness” is too benign a term for what the Left is doing to us. We either stand up to it or submit, and submission is a lousy way to go.
Kill Political Correctness Before It Kills America