…I am not at all convinced that […] the “most recent wave of political correctness is cresting.” Rather, I suspect that it is merely in the process of mutating into a form in which it is less obviously damaging to progressive interests. That “backlash” that David notes? It’s not really a backlash at all. It’s a rearguard action. And that “concern” that we are supposedly hearing from Jezebel and The Nation? It is not the product of intellectual honesty or of a more general desire to institute academic liberty on campus; it’s a self-serving attempt to fight back against those revolutionaries who are eating their own.
In retrospect, it may not have been the smartest idea in the world for the Activist Left to teach eighteen year old students with no relevant life experience and less in the way of institutionalized suffering to be Jacobins. You end up with ‘revolutionaries’ with no sense of proportion, less powers of judgement, and one Hell of a sense of entitlement. Oh, and a galloping case of intolerance for anybody in power, which would include – amusingly! – the Activist Left.
Bon appetit.
Moe Lane
I do not care if the wave of political correctness crests or whether it turns around and engages in a frenzy of self-immolation.*
*It is easier for the Left to turn on the Left because (1) the targets are more vulnerable – they actually believe the nonsense the SJW accusers spout. And (2) the accusations are in places where the institutional authorities also believe in that same nonsense.
If it weren’t for having institutional power to enforce their accusations the SJW’s would be seen as and treated as the spoiled infants and mentally disturbed people they actually are.
Has there ever been any other kind of Jacobin?