Unbecoming America

For John, BLUF:  Unless you were a member of a "disfavored group" you should be OK, if you watch your tongue.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Speaking Bolshevik

From The Hoover Institute, by Mr Paul R. Gregory, Thursday, 5 October 2017.

Here is the lede plus two:

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek said totalitarian regimes—Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism—are forms of government that direct “members of society by a single will supposed to represent the ‘whole.’” This “single will” is dictated by a Stalin, Mao, Hitler, or some collective rule. Per Hayek, such dictatorships require that “everything be governed by a single system of thought,” which rules out freedom of speech and press. These regimes may claim to aspire to lofty goals that compensate for the loss of freedoms, but they inevitably turn brutal, particularly against those who reject their ideology.

A single system of thought has many faults. At a minimum, it rules out competition of ideas. Just as the economy stagnates without competition among firms, so too do social and political regimes stagnate without a competition of ideas. This principle has applications today. The modern left disavows the most destructive aspects of totalitarianism. And yet, its approach to language and ideas is increasingly dictatorial. In recent years, radical leftists have been trying to promote a single system of thought via politically correct speech. This effort is doomed to fail.

In communist and fascist states—as exemplified by the USSR, China, North Korea, and Nazi Germany—a ruling monopoly party dictates a single system of thought which is drummed into the people by a propaganda ministry, a state-media monopoly, and the state-educational establishment. A pervasive secret police apparatus (KGB, Gestapo, or Stasi) finds and punishes those who resist.

After further discussion of how ideologically oriented regimes, such as communism and fascism, corrupt language and require conformity of thought, he looks at America today.

Surely such things would not be a problem in the United States. American constitutional guarantees of free speech, a competitive political system, the private ownership of media and entertainment, and a system of local public schools should rule out a single political language in the United States. Yet leftists have been actively working to stifle free speech on campuses, in corporations, and on social media platforms in recent times. It seems as if these progressives are campaigning to become the arbiters of what speech is allowed and what is forbidden in American society. They are promoting a new variant of speaking Bolshevik— “speaking PC.”

Read the whole thing and be prepared.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff