Here's a purely rhetorical questions: how can something that was wrong from the start go wrong? Political correctness was never a good idea, but the ramifications are either worse than its creators ever dreamed or (heaven forbid!) it's exactly what they had in mind from the beginning.

According to Philip Atkinson, "Political Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s. It was a spontaneous declaration that particular ideas, expressions and behavior, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and people who transgressed should be punished."

Mr. Atkinson points out that freedom of choice and freedom of speech are the community's safeguards against tyranny and states that the rational behind political correctness was to keep people from being offended.

Writing about incidents in Australia, his homeland, he talks about the barbaric reaction to a politician's very truthful comments and the attacks that ensued when listeners heard unpopular truths. He also cites Communist Russia and the severe penalties for expressing any opinion that varied from the official truth. So this is not a new phenomenon nor is it restricted to the U.S.

In an Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind, Mr. Lind states, "For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic."

He goes on to say, "The name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, it's deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious."

Mr. Lind's comparison of Political Correctness with classical Marxism applied to cultural issues is definitely worth reading, addresses the subject in depth, and is terrifying. Lind asserts that both PC and classical Marxism are totalitarian ideologies.

Although Political Correctness did not become a major issue in the U.S. until the 1980s (according to Atkinson), it has invaded our society and our interactions with each other. The results are becoming far too obvious. Its history goes back much farther and includes many countries where a particular ideology has become the official

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