To think critically earns public rebuke

If it weren’t for the fear of being relentlessly attacked by the PC crowd, I would call Philip Martin’s assertion that there’s no such thing as PC culture just plain stupid (Martin’s own word choice). I’m not sure if stupid people are one of the left’s protected classes currently, but one can never be too safe. We now live in a nation where an alarmingly large percentage of university students and recent graduates think it’s reasonable to place limits on free speech they find offensive. Critical thinking is no longer the aspired-to goal of most universities — it is openly discouraged, if not banned. Conservative speakers are routinely denied access to the lecture halls of once-proud institutions of learning on the grounds that their speech is so hurtful as to be considered “violent.” This is no accident. Feelings are far more important than thought to these acolytes of the new zealotry. In the place of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, we now have a relentlessly moralizing left. Just like the religious zealotry of eras past, you must think and, more importantly, feel like the modern left does or you are evil. Modern progressivism is the perfect refuge of the unthinking. It is the constant interplay of virtue signaling and shaming. You must speak up and quote the party line on issues related to any topic of importance or be shunned. Differ with the moralizing herd on immigration and BOOM — you’re a racist. It can’t be that you have honest concerns about our economy and the working poor and homeless who already live here. I could go on and on with examples of this nonsense. The PC blade, moreover, is not a double-edged one — it never cuts both ways. A media or political member of the left can say abhorrent things (think Mika Brzenzinski’s recent televised use of a gay slur) and not be held accountable. Non-leftists are never afforded forgiveness for a misspoken word, no matter how minor. Anyone who tries to deny the existence and huge impact of PC culture on our society just cannot be taken seriously. That assertion is absurd. One can only hope that members of the media and political class on the left are now beginning to try and distance themselves from PC insanity because they finally realize the damage its’ doing, thus Martin’s silly assertions. No reasonable, caring person seeks to do or say things solely to hurt the feelings of another. But holding society, as a whole, hostage to the whims of an ever-offended leftist mob is no way to run a society or to live a life of freedom and individual liberty. STEVE BLEVINS Fayetteville