A reader:

“That article you posted from the BBC was one of the most frightening things

I ever read. It was especially horrifying because it was so understated and

matter-of-fact. I would have at least felt comfortable if it had contained

liberal rantings about sensitivity and the like. Instead, it read like the

most typical of police blotters.

“I never imagined that the next Orwellian state would come about not of the

fascist hatred or the communist collectivism, but of the so-called sanctity

of political correctness. Don’t dare say something rude–You’ll be taking

the state’s power away!”

Well, some of us conservatives have been saying for years that “political

correctness” is fundamentally totalitarian in its tendency, if not always

(on a personal level, I mean) in its intention. Now we see the beast

unsheath its claws.

We should all be thinking very hard about this. The Muslim cleric whose

Op-Ed I just posted makes a case. It’s not a bad case; and, as I said, a

high level of civilization and personal liberty may be able to co-exist with

laws against blasphemy. But is this what we want? And where does it stop?

Should we write laws against all bad manners?

The old informal understandings and arrangements — what Jonah calls “The

Rules” — have all been cut down, as have all the structures of informal

authority (parents, teachers, ministers, cops) that used to enforce them.

Now we are — to borrow Thomas More’s figure — standing naked on the plain,

looking to a credentialed clerisy of lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats to

protect us against the wind. Unfortunately, their heads are full of PoMo

lefty nonsense…