Category Archives: Political Correctness

In politics, framing is the attempt to alter reality by selecting words, slogans and tropes that convince the public to see the other side in a certain negative way. As Robert Entman explains, Toframeis toselect some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendationfor the item described.

Framing is choosing the language, the words, the tropes that will produce the most lasting image in the minds of voters.

Everybody frames everybody with whom they disagree. Evangelicals frame progressives as demons; progressives frame evangelicals as dummies.

Google Democrats as devils, and the web blows up. Headlines scream: Its Almost Official: The Democrats Are the Party of the Devil; The Democratic Party is Satanic, Literally!; Devilfor theDemocrats?; Its all in the details;Its official: theDemocratsare the party of theDevil; The Democrats Are Evil; Democrats Have Become the Partyof Satan. A cursory search produced more than 50 articles insisting that Democrats are devils.

The arguments of the Democrats are devils trope are working. Here are representative samples of the bombarding of the public with the major trope:

Evangelicals, on the other hand, have been framed by liberals as dupes, dummies, backward hillbillies, rednecks, racists and ignorant. The primary pathos of liberal persuasion is shaming. Civil virtue has shamed evangelicals for not supporting gay marriage or feminism.

Shame is a primary liberal pedagogy. Since framing is an attempt at persuasion, it always intensifies what is perceived as the weakness of evangelicals and exaggerates those perceived weaknesses to the maximum.

Shame is a primary liberal pedagogy.

American historian David Blight says, Liberals sometimes invite scorn with their devotion to diversity training and insistence on fighting over words rather than genuine inequality.

Evangelicals, in other words, have reasons for deeming progressives as elitist and hypocritical. In the court of public opinion, perhaps it is hard to discern if liberal framing of evangelicals has stuck.

George Lakoff, in The Political Mind, says progressives have been framed by conservative rhetoric that is deeply emotional and has powerful appeal for voters. Polls show that Americans support Roe v. Wade by large margins. But in conservative framing, abortion is still the go-to issue to show that Democrats and progressive Christians are undermining morality.

Likewise, 70% of Americans support same-sex marriage and 67% of Americans believe in evolution. Even 68% of Republicans support alternative energy development. Yet Republicans continue to win elections by opposing the issues that the majority of the nation supports. The frame job has worked.

Whereas once American Christians lived in the Methodist frame, the Baptist frame, the Episcopal frame, the Catholic frame, the Lutheran frame, or the Presbyterian frame, now conservatives have framed progressives as non-Christians. This has nothing to do with the affirmation of all these mainline Christians of the Apostles Creed. They are framed as non-Christian because of their positions on abortion, marriage and gender.

Now conservatives have framed progressives as non-Christians.

The valedictorian of the progressive Christians are devils class is Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas. Jeffress has framed all Democrats with the charge of paganism: Well, apparently the god they worship is the pagan god of the Old Testament Moloch, who allowed for child sacrifice. The god of the Bible doesnt sanction the killing of millions and millions of children in the womb, I think the god they are worshiping is the god of their own imagination.

Jeffress has called Democrats a godless party and said the God (Democrats) talk about is not the God of the Bible. It is the God of their imagination a God who loves abortion and hates Israel, whereas the true God that most Jews and Christians are familiar with is a God who hates abortion and loves Israel.

No one likes to be shamed, but shame is the primary product of the liberal frame job. Eve Sedgwick asks: Can anyone suppose that well ever figure out what happened around political correctness if we dont see it as, among other things, a highly politicized chain reaction of shame dynamics?

Political correctness becomes a pedagogy, a sweeping masterwork of shame designed to rip residual structures of degradation from speech.

Evangelicals often are confused when people lose jobs because of the use of politically incorrect language. They think they are making jokes, but when shamed by the new civil virtues of acceptance and diversity, they fight back. People get shamed, or lose their jobs, for example, when they believe theyre just having a little fun making fun.

The evangelical angst revolves into a mantra: I feel unfree. It would be cavalier to deny these are legitimate feelings. Evangelicals feel they are being denied freedom of speech.

In the court of public opinion, the evangelical trope seems to stick to progressives; the progressive trope doesnt stick to evangelicals as well.

Democrats and progressives have been framed, and the jury has returned the verdict and found them guilty as charged not on the evidence but on the emotional appeals of the conservative testimonials.

Democrats and progressives have been framed, and the jury has returned the verdict and found them guilty as charged not on the evidence but on the emotional appeals of the conservative testimonials.

In Will Campbells novella, Cecelias Sin, a group of Anabaptists face execution for their faith. The night before their anticipated arrest, they discuss that the authorities claimed they were communists. Goris tries to help Peter understand that it doesnt matter that the charge of communism is false. But they believe we are communist, Goris said. And that is enough. If they think we are seditious, we are seditious. That is what sedition is. It is what they say it is.

No progress can be made in understanding the conservative appeal until we grasp that its about emotional arguments. Facts, truth, reality, policies evaporate like morning dew; emotions of rage, outrage and moral indignation stick like Velcro. The right-wing mantra possesses contagious feelings.

People catch feelings as easily as the common cold. Affect leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame, igniting rage, exciting fear. Feelings not only spread, they stick, according to Sara Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotion.

When these ancient feelings were attacked by a new civic virtue that promoted diversity, acceptance and a new ethical consciousness, conservative thoughts were dislodged and became unstuck. What has followed has been a furious denial of culpability.

The old evangelical paradigm, like a giant white egg, developed cracks and fractures, and panic ensued. The new pedagogy of antiracism, gender emancipation, queer emancipation, new horizons of political enfranchisement turned evangelicals into rebellious students unwilling to be taught by others. Confronted by new ethical paradigms designed to make persons more hospitable, more open, more sensitive, more thoughtful, more moral, evangelicals reverted to the old paradigms and attempted to patch the fractures and cracks.

Perhaps this explains the desperate attempts to revise American history and oppose science in the classroom. The epistemic foundations of evangelical faith are coming loose. Instead of claiming that evangelicals are resentful, Lawrence Grossberg says we should examine the terror of the humiliation of being a victim. One avoids the humiliation of loss and victimage by humiliating the other, by diminishing their status and capacity, destroying their sense of pride, reducing them to a lower state of being. Therefore, evangelicals have intensified attacks on gays, women, transgender persons, immigrants, scientists, historians, liberals. They have framed everyone as devils and demons.

The evangelical feeling machine delivers a constant flow of emotional frames.

The evangelical feeling machine delivers a constant flow of emotional frames. Like a chocolate fountain at a wedding reception, evangelical emotions pour forth to the public feelings, feelings and more feelings. What underscores evangelical argument is emotion.

Progressives, on the other hand, mistrust emotion and at times make fun of emotional arguments as if Aristotle didnt insist on its persuasive power. Progressives can come across as austere, thick-minded, stubborn and insistent on not exhibiting feelings. In place of emotional frames, progressives tend to use intellectual, scholarly, elitist frames.

Progressives are seen as the ones taking away the nation, taking away morals, history and the future. Conservatives insist they are the ones aligned with freedom and rights. They claim they are protecting the nation. Evangelicals feel justified in these claims when they think progressives are no longer taking the Bible seriously. Progressives would be better served by attempting to understand the evangelical frames.

What can progressives do? Perhaps the first move would be to stop playing the frame game. Instead of depicting evangelicals as enemies, return to seeking any possible common ground. Failing to find such an ideal place to stand, at least surrender the language of framing that labels evangelicals as dummies and rednecks.

Admit that conservatives have successfully won the framing war and progressives have failed. Then, develop and articulate a moral vision for the future of democracy. Instead of embracing conservative frames, progressives must construct their own frames. Stop pretending that conservative, evangelical morality is anything other than self-righteous moralism. Insist that the civic morality of acceptance comes far closer to the practice of Jesus than that of evangelicals. Defend democracys anchor institutions. And maintain professional ethics while refusing to buy the lie of the devil that Gods work can be accomplished with the devils means.

Admit that conservatives have successfully won the framing war and progressives have failed.

Progressives should stop trying to use conservative frames and instead use their own language: empathy, compassion, truth, hope, justice, grace, mercy, righteousness. Stop being afraid of emotional arguments. Frame arguments with legitimate emotional appeals. Always speak from moral vision. Progressive policies follow from the morality of empathy and hospitality.

Instead of dismissing evangelical arguments, do a deep dive into the abyss and learn to understand the power of the frame job that has turned progressives into devils. Be able to explain why conservatives believe what they believe without making fun of what they believe.

The great challenge for progressives is to keep the arguments from spiraling out of control into hateful, resentful emptiness. Kenneth Burke argues: The process of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.

If evangelicals would speak of progressives as misguided instead of as devils, perhaps a small crack would occur in the door to make possible renewed conversations with one another.

It is time to break out of the cycle of framing, blaming and judging.

Rodney W. Kennedycurrently serves as interim pastor of Emmanuel Freiden Federated Church in Schenectady, N.Y., and as preaching instructor Palmer Theological Seminary. He is the author of nine books, including the newly releasedThe Immaculate Mistake,about how evangelical Christians gave birth to Donald Trump.

Related articles:

Progressives have a problem telling their story | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy

The Trump Card: How white evangelicals are being played| by Joel Bowman Sr.

Understanding the evangelical civil war| Analysis by Alan Bean

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The futility of framing one another as progressives and evangelicals, devils and dummies - Baptist News Global

On this edition of ST, we talk about how going to college has so dramatically changed in America over the past several years -- the experience of college itself, as well as the expectations people have about college before they even arrive. Our guest is Wendy Fischman; she and Howard Gardner are the co-authors of a book from MIT Press titled "The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be." The book draws upon myriad interviews and a vast amount of research in order to show why higher education in the United States has lost its way, and how universities and colleges can focus -- and, in fact, re-focus -- on their core mission. Indeed, despite what certain media outlets might indicate, most college students today are not preoccupied with political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They're most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they basically see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. There's also, moreover, a clear and present mental-health crisis unfolding on college campuses nationwide, given the pandemic.... Per Library Journal: "In this fascinating book, Gardner and Fischman (both, Harvard Graduate School of Education) share the quantitative and qualitative results of a study conducted from 2013 to 2018, intended to ascertain how participants viewed higher education; they conclude that it has 'lost its way and stands in considerable peril.' The authors found that students are struggling with mental health and feelings of belonging and alienation -- from their fellow students, from their scholarly work, and from their institutions. The study focused on 10 colleges and relied on surveys and interviews with students, faculty, staff, administrators, trustees, young alumni, and parents.... [The book's] epilogue includes a thought-provoking dialogue between the authors as they reflect on their own educational journeys."

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"The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be" - Public Radio Tulsa

Milks favorite cookie wants you to know its OK to be gayagain.

Im sure youve wondered, as youve dipped your delicious, cream-filled cookie (Double Stuf, please!) into a nice, cold glass of milk: What is Oreos policy about coming out?

Wonder no more. Not even a Birthday Cake Oreoor my kids favorite, the Fudge Covered Oreois safe from woke politics.

On Monday, Oreos parent company Nabisco released a short film detailing a young Asian mans experience coming out as gay.

In the two-and-a-half-minute film, the boy nervously reads a note to his immediate family, and it becomes apparent he is practicing to come out as gay to his extended family, who are soon to visit. The scene is tense. The doorbell rings, a family member grabs an Oreo before answering it. A handwritten note from the mother is visible on the boys speech.

She might be my mother, but you are my son, the note reads. The film ends on a high note as presumably the boy comes out as gay and all happily get a sugar high from Oreos afterward.

Coming out doesnt happen just once. Its a journey that needs love and courage every step of the way, Oreo tweeted along with the video. Share our new film and let someone know youre their #LifelongAlly.

As a brand, Oreo can, of course, do whatever it wants. If it wants to hire renowned director Alice Wu to make a short film on coming out and Oreos, by all means.

But that doesnt exclude the rest of us from some marketing observations.

If youd told me 20 years ago that in the year 2022 we would not yet have flying cars but wed have cookie brands endorsing the LGBT lifestyle through artistic short films posted on social media, Id have laughed out loud.

Woke politics have consumed so much of life that even household brand names feel the need to make a show of their outward support.

Im just curious: Was there pressure from the LGBT community to do this? Was a gay person hesitant to eat an Oreo because he didnt know Nabiscos position? Chances are slim to none.

Its easy to make light ofbecause its a cookie, for goodness sakebut were seeing a surge in large corporations and popular brands diving head first into woke marketing.

You know the first rule of business: Follow the money. As such, we endeavor to understand what that means. Oreo didnt invest in a film like this for nothing.

If you think a commercial like this sounds commonplace or maybe just benign, a shift in characters might help you come to a different conclusion.

Imagine Oreo doing a commercial on a Chinese man coming out as Christian to his family in China. Christians are heavily persecuted in Communist China, but Christianity is also growing rapidly, due to that persecution. However, Oreo would never communicate such an inspirational truth.

Commercials like Oreos manage to communicate this absurdity: Despite the LGBT communitys constant appeals for media attention and for equality, it not only has both, but it proves a much more problematic point; namely, only left-wing politics, particularly about gender identity or sexual orientation, command the attention of household brands.

Anything else would be too basic, too boring, too center-right, or too religious.

Increasingly, corporate America has been stepping in to support woke social justice causes. Political correctness has captured big businesses, even brands previously just associated with a sugar high, theme parks like Disney World, or childrens programming, like that of Nickelodeon. That brand just tweeted about a transgender kid for the so-called Transgender Day of Visibility, highlighting a childs gender dysphoria for the world.

LGBT activists complain about being caught in the middle of the culture war, even as they fuel the controversy at every turn, even rendering cookies like Oreos woke.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email[emailprotected]and well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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Oreos Gone Woke: Is Nothing Off Limits to LGBT Left? - Daily Signal

Michael Eric Dyson

"Youre telling me Im being sensitive, and students looking for safe spaces that theyre being hypersensitive. If youre white, this country is one giant safe space."

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Michael Eric Dyson

"Youre telling me Im being sensitive, and students looking for safe spaces that theyre being hypersensitive. If youre white, this country is one giant safe space."

Michael Eric Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, aNew York Timescontributing opinion writerand a contributing editor ofThe New Republic.

Dyson came fromhumble roots in Detroit, where he was a welfare father, a church pastor and a factory worker. Hestartedcollegeat21and eventuallycompleted his doctorate in religion at Princeton University, studying Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

He has authored 21 books, taught at elite universities, and wonprestigious honors thatincludean American Book Award and two NAACP Image Awards.Ebonymagazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential African Americans, and as one of the 150 most powerfulBlacks in the nation.

Dysons1994 bookMaking Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, was named one of the most important African American books of the 20th centuryand hisNew York TimesbestsellerThe Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, has been described asan interpretive miracle andwas a finalist for the 2016KirkusPrize.

Dyson has appeared on everymajor television and radio show in theUnited States,includingThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert,Real Time with Bill Maher andNPRs All Things Considered.

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Political Correctness - Munk Debates

No one-party system

In response to The new liberalism, it's always interesting to me to read letters from people who compartmentalize their narrative regarding political points of view.

The letter writer wrote that we are on the verge of a metamorphosis of political values in our country. Apparently, these changing values only apply to Democrats. He threw in words like liberalism, socialism, political correctness and the popular word of late, environmentalists, as if that is a dirty word. He went on to state that the Democratic Party is not the party it once was during the Kennedy era. That I would agree with, but neither is the Republican Party the party of Eisenhower.

It's a shame that we have become not only a two-party system exclusively; it also has become only black-and-white issues as far as points of view. When did we stop talking to one another? When did it start to be anti-Republican when criticizing a particular politician who happens to be Republican? We should be allowed to criticize the people who say they are representing us in office when they are not doing their job in their constituents best interest.

This is where we are failing as a democracy. This is where we allow outside influences to dictate where this country is going. People from both parties complain constantly about the workings of our government in one way or another, but these career politicians keep getting voted back into office. Wasn't it the Republicans years ago who said the definition of stupidity is to keep putting the same people back in office and expecting a different outcome? Doesn't that apply to both political parties?

I hear Republicans saying we will be much better off without the Democratic Party. So, it would be better to have a one-party system in this country? Is that what the talking heads are recommending on the radio and TV? So, if tomorrow we found ourselves in a one-party system, who would lead us?

People worry about socialism, liberalism and the rest, but are we OK with a dictatorship? Even if the Republican president we just had was to lead the country, who would follow him, and would he be the best man for the job? You'll never know because with a dictatorship you don't have a choice.

I'd also like to add there are other countries with one-party systems like Russia, Iran and North Korea. How is it doing for the citizens living in those countries?

Bob Del Castillo, Leesburg

By the way: Top Florida Democrats remain confident even amid Biden's low approval ratings

In other news: Daughter of ex-Indiana, Florida education czar Tony Bennett shot to death. Husband charged

Gas prices: Florida's yo-yo'ing gas prices on the decline after double-digit increase last week

As the nation continues to grapple with the pandemic, 1 in 5 kids in Florida could be heading to school with empty stomachs. Hunger has long-term ramifications on children, including lower test scores, weaker attendance rates, and a higher risk of hospitalizations and chronic diseases.

Luckily, we have a powerful tool to combat childhood hunger: nutritious school breakfasts. School breakfast is a critical way to ensure kids get the consistent nutrition they need to feel better, learn and grow up strong.

Despite unanticipated supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, school nutrition staff across the state have pivoted efforts to ensure kids received a healthy meal to start the day. We celebrate the critical role school nutrition professionals play in helping Floridas children succeed in and out of the classroom.

Sky Beard, director, No Kid Hungry Florida

Send a letter to the editor (up to 250 words) toletters@dailycommercial.com. Letters must include the writer's full name and city of residence.Guest columns of up to 750 words are also accepted on a limited basis.More information onsubmitting letters and columns can be found at dailycommercial.com/opinion.

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Today's letters: Readers comment on the one-party system and school lunches - Daily Commercial

Is American society being overcome by an oppressive gang bent on stifling other peoples free speechand even worse, are people now self-censoring in ways heretofore unseen, to avoid the wrath of so-called woke mobs who are intolerant of dissenting views?

In a word, no. What right-wing culture warriors have successfully labeled cancel culture continues to be an empty vessel into which anyone can pour their grievances, as part of an effort to gain victimhood status by claiming that the world is just so unfair to them. It would be funny if it were not so serious. Come to think of it, it continues to be both funny and serious.

In two Verdict columnsone last week and the other last MayI have pointed out that the rights decades-long effort to label everything politically correct has now been re-branded under the cancel culture/wokeness banner. The new packaging in no way changes the fact that there is no substance to any of this. No matter the epithet, complaints of this sort all boil down to conservatives saying: I dont like being disagreed with, and youre being intolerant for not agreeing that Im right.

When there is a phrase that is being misused or that has no meaning, I try to follow George Orwells instructions to refuse to use the phrase. As Orwell taught us, when people speak without truly understanding what they are saying, they can inadvertently reinforce a narrative that is socially destructive.

It has now reached the point, however, where the better move might simply be to deliberately overuse the offending phrases, hoping to make them useless through dilution and mockery. After all, if there is no meaningful definition of political correctness, cancel culture, or wokeness, then everything and everyone can be accused of being guilty of them. Why play defense when we can go on offense?

I try to be careful when choosing my words, both when I write and when I interact directly with people. I do not always get everything just right, of course, but the effort is important. If we want to be understoodand, again per Orwell, to prevent our own loose word choices from twisting our own thinkingwe should only use words and phrases that have clear meanings.

And this is just as true in academic contexts as it is in popular culture. For example, I have long been fighting a losing battle against the use of the term efficiency in the sense that economists use the word. One of the reasons that I moved from economics into law was that I had figured out that the concept of efficiency (sometimes called Pareto Efficiency, although all economic definitions of efficiency suffer from the same fatal flaw) has no fixed meaning. After leaving economics, however, I was disheartened to see my colleagues in law toss around the word efficiency as if it meant something, just as my economics colleagues had done.

At some point, I realized that there might be no putting that genie back in the bottle, so I decided simply to claim that every policy I like is efficient and that every policy I dislike is inefficient. And because there is no neutral, objective baseline against which efficiency can be measured, I will not be wrong. I will also not be right, but neither is anyone else. That is what happens when people use empty words.

We are definitely at that point now with PC/cancel culture/wokeness. As I noted in my column last week, the brothers Cuomo are both hiding behind claims that their falls from grace were the dastardly result of cancel culture, turning themselves into victims of an intolerant world rather than facing the truth, which is that they did bad things and faced at least some consequences for doing sotoo little and too late, but still something.

One might have thought that it could not become any more absurd than Chris and Andrew C., but then we all witnessed the spectacle of Vladimir Putin complaining about having been canceled. He even tried to compare himself to the author J.K. Rowling, who has received much-deserved criticism for her anti-trans rantings on Twitter and elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, Rowling wanted nothing to do with Putin, so she distanced herself from the murderous war criminal. Even so, the episode exposed the emptiness of cancel culture in another important way.

A Canadian comedian who runs a YouTube channel called Rational National responded to the Putin/Rowling situation in two ways, both of which are useful for thinking about what is and is not happening. First, he said that Rowling had not in fact been canceled because she is still quite successful, her books still sell, and she has upcoming projects that have not been taken away from her.

This is true, and it applies just as much to the other high-profile people who whine about being canceled even as they either face no consequences at all or quickly land on their feet after a brief period of minor discomfort. Even so, this way of thinking suggests that it would truly be an example of cancel culturewhich, to be clear, we are to believe is most definitely badif someone like Rowling were to lose her career as a result of backlash against something that she said or did. The idea is apparently that it is not cancel culture if something has not in fact been canceled.

This, however, completely misunderstands what is happening. Those of us who truly believe in freedom of choice and the power of the free market understand that not everyone has a right to earn a living in exactly the way that they would like. If I am selling something but no one is buying, I have not been canceled. I have just been told that there are no customers who are willing to give me money, clicks, or likes.

If Rowlings bigotry resulted in her never selling another book, then, she would simply be facing the consequences of market choices made by free people. Entertainment is the ultimate at-will employment situation. In most American workplaces, people can be fired for any reasonor for no reason at all. And an authors employers are her potential readers, who have every right to stop buying her books for any reasonor again, even for no reason at all. I happen to believe that at-will employment is a bad way to run most workplaces, but it is inevitable in the context of entertainment.

Rational Nationals second argument is that, even though J.K. Rowling has not been canceled, when symphonies and other public entertainment venues change plans and decide not to perform works by Tchaikovsky and other Russian artists, that is genuine cancel culture. Tchaikovsky, after all, did not invade Ukraine, and his being dead makes it impossible to know whether he would have supported Putins mass murder. Why should his music be censored?

The answer is that nothing is being censored. Rather, the market is speaking. It does not matter whether the symphonies decisions are being driven by the opinions of the people who run them or by fear of the publics reaction. There is nothing wrong with saying, You know, right now, I just dont want to celebrate Russian culture. I know thats not necessarily rational, but it just feels wrong.

Republicans canceled French fries in the early 2000s after the government of France criticized the Bush administrations rush to war in Iraq. I, along with most people, thought that that was beyond silly, but it was certainly their right. If a restaurant owner today were to decide not to offer Russian salad dressing, or borscht, or vodka, we might think that she is overreacting (or we might not); but there is nothing about this that is inappropriate or oppressive. Buyers and sellers can decide what they are willing to buy and sell, and they can change their minds if they want to. This is not censorship, political correctness, or any of the rest. It is capitalism.

But what about situations in which people harshly condemn other people for their views. As I described in my column last week, the editors of The New York Times became very exercised by the idea that people were shaming and shunning those with whom they disagree. To which I responded, in essence: Yes and?

People are always making decisions about who they like, who they will avoid, and whether they will respond to or simply ignore someone with whom they disagree. An article in The New Republic last week reported that OkCupid Users Dont Want to Date Climate Deniers, and my first thought was: Oh great, now climate deniers are going to complain about being canceled or woke-mobbed, or something. But for heavens sake, is it really a problem if someone says that climate change is a deal-breaker for them in the dating world?

The issue, however, is supposedly that democracy itself is at stake, at least in the eyes of The Times. Far beyond the realm of dating, young people are supposedly now uniquely unwilling to listen to those with whom they disagree. I, however, am confident that democracy is not going to die because some twenty-somethings sometimes exercise bad judgment (at worst) and refuse to listen to someone. Again, the right to speak is not the same as a right to have other people listen.

The anecdotes floating around about people losing their jobs over seemingly minor things turn out to be isolated cases, and there have always been injustices in the workplace. On campuses, for all the rending of garments over students supposed unwillingness to risk being judged, I have not seen any change in that regard over the last thirty-plus years of teaching. And as long as we are dealing in anecdotes, I have asked various of my current students whether there is something that I am missing, and they have said that there is nothing to this whole brouhaha.

That, of course, does not stop the right-wing culture warriors from trying to use the PC/cancel culture/wokeness panic to their advantage. In response to political pressure, my states university system has announced that it will soon administer an Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Survey, the purpose of which is to assess the extent to which you feel free to express your beliefs and viewpoints on campus. This is essentially a casting call for people willing to take on the comforting role of societys innocent victim.

There is nothing new here, with old grievances being reissued with different labels. Again, my point in writing this column is to acknowledge that there is no turning back now, because we have entered the phase of the social panic where people have begun to reflexively refer to cancellation in a completely mindless way.

Most amusingly, the editors of The Washington Post opined last Wednesday that former Vice President Mike Pence deserves a fair hearing as he tries to rehabilitate his reputation so that he can run for president in 2024. The headline? Mike Pence provokes bipartisan intolerance. He deserves to be heard.

Pardon me, but it is not intolerant to judge Mike Pence. He has fully revealed who he is, and if people do not want to sit and listen while he piously whitewashes history (pun intended), they have every right to turn away. He does not deserve to be heard, and no one has any reason to listen to him. Those who choose to do so are free to indulge him, but that is a matter of grace on their part.

The amusing part of The Posts editorial, however, was the opening line: Whatever ones views on former vice president Mike Pence ours have been critical theres no denying that efforts to silence and cancel him have been bipartisan. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we now live in a world in which one of the major newspapers in the world uses the word cancel as a synonym for ignore, as is everyones right.

The Posts unthinking use of silence and cancel regarding Pence unmistakably tells us that there is no going back. There is no longer any point in begging people, Stop talking about cancel culture. It means nothing! Game over. The language has been further debased by an all-purpose, content-free insult.

The only response, then, is to start the next game, in which we say that everythingand I mean everythingis cancel culture. Donald Trump is trying to cancel Hunter Biden. Republican senators voting against Ketanji Brown Jacksons Supreme Court nomination are merely a bunch of censorious cancel-culture warriors. The Stop the Steal people are trying to cancel American democracy. And what do I have to say to anyone who disagrees with this column? Stop canceling me!

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So-Called Cancel Culture Is a Vacant Concept, So It Can Be Turned Back Against the Culture Warriors - Justia Verdict

In the early 1990s, there was a lull in the lucrative tradition of college comedies. Sensing an opportunity, 20th Century Fox greenlit PCU, a low-budget film that featured a cast of largely unknown actors. Considered a direct descendent of 1978s raucous Animal House, it updated the premise by setting the movie on a campus dominated by activist politics and political correctness. At the time, P.C. was still a new cultural concept to most Americans, and as the movies hero helpfully explains, Its not just politics, its everything. Its what you eat, its what you wear and its what you say. And if you dont watch yourself, you can get yourself in a buttload of trouble.

The film was released on April 29, 1994. It flopped.

Then as the years passed, it found an audience and achieved cult status through constant replays on cable and robust home video rentals.

Written by Adam Leff and Zak Pennwho had just graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticutmuch of PCU satirized their own experiences. They attended Wesleyan during a tumultuous time that included protests over the schools investments in Apartheid-era South Africa, a push for more faculty of color, and the firebombing of the presidents office.

The movie mostly takes place over a single day as a clueless pre-frosh named Tom (played by Chris Young) visits the fictional Port Chester University. He is assigned to stay with Droz (Jeremy Piven, in his first lead performance), a fast-talking shitstarter who rules over The Pit, a former fraternity thats become the home of the schools wastoids and weirdos. The Pit is in the midst of a multi-front war. The house is loathed by the Causeheads, whose protests dominate campus life, as well as a group of radical feminists called the Womynists. They are also seen as a blight on the college by both the schools self-servingly progressive administration (represented by an acidic Jessica Walter as President Garcia-Thompson) and Balls and Shaft, a crew of preppy Reaganites led by David Spades Rand McPherson. When the residents of The Pit learn they must pay $7000 in property damages or lose their house, they plan to raise the cash with a rager that will attract the entire student body. After house band Everyone Gets Laid cant perform, they miraculously get Parliament-Funkadelic to replace them. Good times and fleeting student unity ensues.

PCU included the first major role for Jon Favreau, who proved himself to be a multifaceted talent as the writer of Swingers and, more recently, a critical component in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars television shows. Matt Ross has a small part, decades before he had more memorable appearances (like Hooli founder Gavin Belson in Silicon Valley) and transitioned into directing projects like the film Captain Fantastic and the upcoming Watergate series Gaslit. Additionally, PCU marked the directorial debut of Hart Bochner, an actor best known for playing the ber-yuppie prick Ellis in Die Hard and who recently portrayed billionaire Larry Ellison in Hulus The Dropout. Not long after PCUs release, its writers stopped working together, with Leff eventually leaving the film industry. Penn has amassed decades worth of work in entertainment, including credits on films like Ready Player One and last years Free Guy.

Almost 30 years later, many of the ideas that PCU skewered have returned as national debates on wokeness and cancel culture. These subjects have become an obsession in cable news, talk radio, podcasts, social media platforms, and political messaging. Under the clips of the film that have made it to YouTube, some commenters see PCU as a dark prophecy of societys future that went unheeded. That wasnt the movies intention, though, and its creators still dont see it that way. Instead, they were more troubled by a climate where young people turned against each other, rather than attacking the institutions that wielded power over them.

The thing that drove PCU was a messagethough it definitely is not a message moviethat we can all see each other in our different categories and hopefully still find some common ground, says Paul Schiff, the movies producer. And that common ground may be defined by the ability to laugh at ourselves, at each other, and find some common humanity in what we all share. Thats an idealistic and probably well-intentioned notion, but one that might feel out of touch in 2022.

After the disappointment of PCU, Jeremy Piven returned to supporting parts before going on to win three Emmys for his work as the agent Ari Gold on Entourage. Then in 2017 and 18, BuzzFeed News reported that multiple women accused Piven of sexual assault and harassment. Piven denies all these allegations and says hes subsequently been excluded from the mainstream entertainment industry, enmeshing him in the modern cancel culture debate. In response, he has turned to careers in podcasting and stand-up comedy.

While PCU fans are still out there, once again its presence has started to recede. Not only is it unavailable on any streaming service, it currently cant be rented or bought from Amazon and Apple.

Here, PCUs creators, the actors who played the inhabitants of The Pitand even George Clinton, king of interplanetary funktell the story of how this film was made and how its been received over the decades.

THE SCRIPT AND INSPIRATION

Zak Penn (screenwriter): I got to Wesleyan in 1986, graduated in 1990. I was actually a theater major.

Adam Leff (screenwriter): I did five years, 85 to 90. The fifth year I was there, I was just making my student film. Wesleyan back then was far more loosey-goosey. I don't think they would let a student just do a fifth year for fun anymore. We weren't paying tuition or anything.

Zak Penn: There were a lot of protests over the things that there still are on college campuses, which are violence against women and racism. And sometimes there were protests over really random things. That was part of Wesleyan's charm.

Adam Leff: It was the birth of Womanist House and women's studies. Every weekend there was a vigil outside the frat houses.

Zak Penn: One of the inspirations for the movie was one of the first classes I was in. The professor said that he was a Black lesbian trapped in the body of a white man. Nowadays, that would go over extremely poorly, but in those days it was considered radically progressive.

Adam Leff: It always seemed comical. Here we were at this super privileged liberal arts college in Connecticut, and yet the campus looked like Berkeley in 1968.

Zak Penn: I had written a bunch of plays, and then I wrote a screenplay for one of the student films. Adam and I decided to team up. As soon as we left Wesleyan, we immediately wrote a script about a giant rat in Central Park, which we decided not to show anyone. We did actually sell it years later, but whatever. A year out of college, we sold Last Action Hero and had a career. We got fired almost immediately, which is why we don't have a screenplay credit on it.

Adam Leff: We started to pursue the idea that it would be really funny to make a modern-day Animal House.

Zak Penn: We sold the pitch for PCU to Paul Schiff, another Wesleyan graduate.

Paul Schiff (producer): I had my producing deal at Fox. I had started that with the film My Cousin Vinny. Zak and Adam came into my office and we were just talking about our experiences at Wesleyan. Out of that conversation, an idea sprung up.

Zak Penn: In Hollywood, [political correctness] wasn't a big deal. Nobody really talked about it back then. We were just kind of making fun of the stuff that we had just been living with for four years. It wasn't like, Oh, we need to make a statement to warn the world about encroaching P.C. culture.

Adam Leff: I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, This is where the country's headed. It always seemed fringe.

Zak Penn: It's based on my own pre-frosh weekend at Wesleyan. I stayed with a guy I knew named James Drosnes, who lived in Eclectic House.

Adam Leff: Eclectic was filled with a lot of punk rockers. They had the best parties every weekend, so we would go get wasted and occasionally score some drugs, to be totally honest.

Zak Penn: Eclectic had a great sense of humor and had great bands.

Adam Leff: They were very apolitical. They weren't actively at war with Womanist House. That's something that we invented.

Zak Penn: Almost all of the people in the movie have some basis [in real people].

Adam Leff: Pigman was based on an actual guy named Pigman. He was not constantly watching TV. I don't think he had a TV. He was constantly smoking pot.

I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, This is where the country's headed. It always seemed fringe. Adam Leff, screenwriter

Zak Penn: Gutter is a dumb version of my very smart friend, Marc Flacks, who had dreadlocks and quit the football team to follow his Marxist studies desires.

Marc Flacks (sociology professor, kinda inspiration for Gutter): I grew up in the hard left. [Politically correct] was a term we used. It was a way that leftwing people would help each other stay on message and be righteous. It was never expected that somebody at Dartmouth would be politically correct. We knew that they knew they were conservative bastards.

Zak Penn: Three different people think they're the basis for Droz. It's kind of an archetypal character, a guy who always seems to have the right line and is constantly down for having a good time.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Paul Schiff: It was a very different time in the feature business than now. Fox was probably making 40 to 50 movies a year.

Zak Penn: I learned subsequently that often you sell a pitch and you're working on it for years, then it sits around and one day, a long time later, it gets made. [PCU] was incredibly lucky. It all happened really, really fast.

Paul Schiff: [Foxs] distribution pattern consisted of big-budget movies, international titles that they knew would travel, dramas, comedies, romance, action, adventure The idea of sprinkling in some lower-budget movies was very common in those days. We were able to kind of slip into the system because they had a pipeline to fill.

Megan Ward (actor, plays Katy): There were all those 90s movies that had that high-concept, low-budget thingthese mini studio movies.

Zak Penn: Paul Schiff and the studio executives were basically like, Move onto the lot and take these offices. I believe Mel Brooks had the other half of the bungalows.

Hart Bochner (director): Ive been acting since 1975. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a director. So in 1991, I wrote and directed a short [The Buzz], which was a black comedy that I got my buddy Jon Lovitz to do about a guy who gets trapped in his apartment with a mosquito. 20th Century Fox and Paul Schiff saw it, and then the campaign began to try to secure the job directing [PCU].

The more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, theres an opportunity here. Hart Bochner, director

Zak Penn: We were huge fans of his because he was in Die Hard. That's all we wanted to talk about.

Hart Bochner: Initially, I thought its not really my sensibilities, its not really my area of expertise. I had been out of college at that point for over a dozen years. But the more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, theres an opportunity here.

Zak Penn: The first draft for PCU was pretty insane. We had an ending where President Garcia-Thompson pulls off her face. It's a mask and it reveals that it was Ed McMahon. Then he pulls off that mask and its President Garcia-Thompson again. We had this crazy subplot that The Pit had been built on a Native American burial ground and also a pet cemetery. So at the end, this ghost appears and its a dog. Then they say, Oh my God, it's a ghost dog. And he was like, Non-human animal companion, please.

Hart Bochner: We steered the writers. These guys were exceptionally talented. It wasnt necessarily a joke-driven piece of material, but in its observations of campus life and political correctness, I thought we could mine it for more humor.

Zak Penn: The Simpsons had come out while we were in college, and we wanted to embrace that and do something where you just dont know quite where this movie is going to go. As we got closer to production, the studio started to have cold feet about some of that stuff and said, Maybe we should just focus on the characters and the comedy and less on breaking the fourth wall.

Hart Bochner: We didn't reinvent it. We just strengthened stuff.

Zak Penn: In the earliest drafts, theres a lot more drug-taking. Theres a whole sequence where Gutter gets really high and the heads of the studio appear on-screen and disavow smoking pot.

Hart Bochner: We had our R-rated version of the script, which was a little raunchier. When the Womynists are playing Frisbee versus the Deadheads, the women were topless. The studio said, No, no, no. You gotta deliver a PG-13. So I shot a PG-13 version.

Zak Penn: We had a lot of nudity because naked guy, who was a real guy, was always nude. We just had a lot of ironic nudity in it, frankly.

CASTING

Hart Bochner: We met all the actors of the day.

Zak Penn: We got to watch the auditions. We saw a parade of actors coming through, many of whom became big stars. I remember one day, were in this front office and John Stamos comes in. We were shocked that he was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns. He was like, Have you guys read this script? So many words. Jesus. And we were just like, Yeah, we wrote it.

Hart Bochner: I talked to Adam Sandler, Ashley Judd. I was kind of dating Naomi Watts at the time, I felt she was too young. Steve Zahn was up for the role of the pre-frosh. There was an abundance of talent out there. I felt that it was critical that not only did everybody have to get the joke, but there had to be a sort of sweet innocence about all the actors. Young actors would come in that were edgy or a bit angry, and that wouldnt have worked. And there were actors like Andy Dick, who were really punctuating the humor physically, which wouldn't have worked either.

Paul Schiff: The studio was betting on new, fresh comedy voices. There were certainly discussions about bigger names, but there was no pressure of: We're not going to make the movie unless you can get a famous name.

Hart Bochner: I had seen Adam [Sandler] on Saturday Night Live and thought, frankly, he was too broad. I wanted something more grounded in reality. He has turned into a terrific actor who can play any number of personalities, which was my mistake,

Adam Leff: We had originally hoped Chris Farley would play Droz. I dont know what the movie would have been like with Farley and Spade. I think it probably would have been very funny, but in a different way.

Before carrying PCU, many of Jeremy Pivens early roles were in films starring John Cusack, his real-life best friend who he grew up with. When Piven was cast in PCU, he had a job playing a writer on The Larry Sanders Show, which he left to shoot the film.

Hart Bochner: My buddy Cameron Crowe had used [Jeremy Piven] in Singles. I thought, That guy has the right energy for it.

Paul Schiff: I remember Piven's audition very well. It was wild and hilarious and full of that great manic vibrating quality.

Jeremy Piven (actor, plays Droz): My father [the actor and drama teacher Byrne Piven] was someone who never shied away from the truth, for good or ill. He introduced me to people like John Malkovich, who as a child I got to see do True West, and he was an absolute beautiful anarchist. Of course John Belushi. I started at Second City with Chris Farley. There were a lot of great wild animals, and you draw from everything in your world.

Megan Ward: Chris [Young] I kind of knew as a peer. We were in that same pack of people who audition for the young leads of shows. I didn't know him personally, but he had done work around things that I had auditioned for. He was rising at the time.

We were shocked that John Stamos was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns. Zak Penn, screenwriter

Paul Schiff: It was a hard role because he was essentially the straight man. It was played with innocence and wide-eyed wonder, walking into this crazy world. That takes a certain finesse and I thought he did that quite well.

Young left acting in the late 1990s and currently works as an executive in technology-based entertainment. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Alex Dsert (actor, plays Mullaney): I had just done The Heights. I had been working on some TV shows that would go, like, a season.

Megan Ward: Spade was famous, but I think he had only been on Saturday Night Live for a year.

Gale Mayron (actor, plays Cecilia): I'd gone to film school, so I had been trying to figure out how am I going to direct something. Acting was always something I did, but kind of half-assedly because it's such a fraught, difficult business, especially as a woman. I had done lots of tiny B-movies. I was always the girl that wound up dead, strangled alongside the road or thrown in a refrigerator. I got a job for three months at MTV. It was [co-hosting] a live TV show [Hangin w/ MTV], the before-TRL.

Paul Schiff: [Jon Favreau] was completely unknown at the time. The studio felt they needed to put him through his paces, but we knew from the get-go that there was no one else we were interested in.

Hart Bochner: The smartest guy on the set was Favreau. He had tremendous ideas. I wanted him to play it like a goofy puppy.

Alex Dsert: They gave Jon dreadlocks for the movie. [During filming] I remember going, Yo, you got to know what it feels like to be a dreadlock, and there happened to be a double feature of The Harder They Come and Rockers going. We were on the train and then this rasta walked on. He gives me the proper whats up nod and gives Jon the once over real slow and real hard, then looks him in the eye and goes, Respect, and walks away. I remember going, Youre indoctrinated!

FILMING

Paul Schiff: We wanted to make the movie in the States and find that perfect college-on-the-hill setting. There were financial pressures, and the best way to get the most days of shooting and the most resources was to go to Toronto. Connecticut at the time didnt have any tax incentives and there was no infrastructure for filming. We did sneak onto Wesleyans campus and shot a few establishing shots, just for fun.

Zak Penn: We all hung out together in Toronto and we were all around college age. It was kind of an amazing experience,

Paul Schiff: What was great about making a small movie at a studio that's making all these other projects is we didn't get a lot of surveillance.

Megan Ward: I had done a season of a series [Class of 96] in Toronto the year before, so I became Julie Your Cruise Director of Toronto for everybody.

Alex Dsert: In my head, its like the Peanuts gang walking down the streets of Toronto.

Adam Leff: Lots of times the writers get booted to the side or replaced. We were on set the whole time, which is rare in my experience and super fun. It was what I thought screenwriting was going to be like before I actually experienced it.

Zak Penn: We were there rewriting anything that we were asked to. There have only been two or three movies that Ive written that Ive been on set the whole way, and PCU was one of them.

If you remember it, you werent there. George Clinton, musician

Paul Schiff: It was their idea, and the specificity of their observations about their own experience was a big part of the project. It seems pretty silly not to have the creators there to be able to make adjustments and tweaks and fixes along the way to sharpen the writing and sharpen the jokes.

Megan Ward: [Piven] got malaria. How do you get malaria in Canada? He was literally in the hospital for like 48 hours.

Alex Dsert: Piven is just the king of improvisation, letting it flow. Whats great about that is you dont have to do too much, just react and act.

Megan Ward: So many of those lines came from Piven and Favreau.

Zak Penn: We had the whole discussion about dont wear the shirt of the band youre going to see, and Piven came up with, Don't be that guy. We were just like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. And were totally going to get credit for it.

Alex Dsert: There was supposed to be a big band [play the party], but we weren't sure who it was going to be. We thought it was going to be Stevie Wonder. There were all these different rewrites.

Zak Penn: Originally it was Nirvana. It was before they were huge, and then they got so big we couldnt get them. Then for a minute, it was going to be Anthrax. I remember going to meet with them at a hotel in LA.

Hart Bochner: It was floated by a buddy of mine who was a music supervisor, What if you got the Goo Goo Dolls? Even though they were popular at the time, it doesnt make sense for this movie tonally. We hired Ralph Sall [as music supervisor] and he said, What about George Clinton?

Zak Penn: Clinton ended up being perfect.

In the film, George Clinton and his bands bus gets lost on the way to a show in Hartford and they end up in Port Chester. Not recognizing who they are, the character Gutter asks for a ride back to The Pit. When they get there, Droz convinces the group to play their party instead, which is what causes the students to pause their in-fighting and have fun.

George Clinton (founder of Parliament-Funkadelic): If you remember it, you werent there. I do remember that they had some of the first of what they called kind budchronic and all of that. We had a ball, that's what I remember.

Alex Dsert: When they arrived, Jon, George, and I were in the van. They were driving us to set and Jon asked him, Have you ever been to Toronto before? And George looks up, takes a minute and says, "Yeah, it was 1967." And Jon goes, What was it like? And he goes, All I remember is a green pill. And that was it.

George Clinton: We went through a lot of the colleges for real, especially during 67, 68, and 69. We was living in Cambridge, around Harvard, BCU, and Amherst. We played all those colleges so much that we saw all of those actual characters that was in that movie in real life.

Alex Dsert: When they were on set, doing the playback, it was electrifying.

George Clinton: We came up with doing Erotic City, and they wanted us to do Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off). [Erotic City] was one of Princes funkiest ones and that was my boy. We always jam with his songs in rehearsals. I just knew [Erotic City] would be a slick one, just like the way Otis Day and them did Shout and Shammalamma Ding Dong from the 50s [in Animal House].

Gale Mayron: I had to do a scene with [Clinton]. The band were all hanging out for a couple of days, and I just went over and I started hanging out with them. And then I was like [to the other actors], It's OK guys, come over. Its really cool. He was so sweet. I asked for a souvenir and he gave me a couple of his dreadlocks, which I kept, and a signed P-Funk CD.

Production on PCU ended in the summer of 1993.

RELEASE AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Hart Bochner: [During filming] everybody was raving about the dailies. I remember people [at Fox] saying to me, Youre our A-list comedy guy here.

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The Oral History of PCU, the Culture Wars Cult Classic - VICE

If you doubt modern leftisms totalitarian ambitions, look around.

For the first time since the 1850s, discussion of secession is spreading in the formerly United States. There is even talk of civil war. What is driving such a strange development in American politics? An attempt to transform this country into an ideological state.

History is familiar with ideological states, states where dissent from the official ideology is dangerous: the Soviet Union, Communist China, Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, etc. At times, various ideologies have attempted to draw in Americans, with some temporary success. Fortunately, none gained sufficient power to impose themselves on the countryuntil now.

By the nature of ideology itself, all ideologies seek a totalitarian state. Every ideology says that, on the basis of this or that set of abstract ideas, certain things must be so: only Aryans can do anything right and Jews are inherently evil; everything is determined by ownership of the means of production and the bourgeoisie is evil; modern Italy can be a new Rome and only Italians can make good coffee, etc. Invariably, reality contradicts the ideologys central theses. The ideologues respond by outlawing discussion of the contradictions. Freedom of thought and expression are deadly threats to ideologies, and are therefore every ideologys first targets.

The ideology now attempting to impose itself on America is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms by a think tank established in Germany in 1923, the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as the Frankfurt School. (Those wanting a quick introduction to the Frankfurt School can find it on YouTube under History of Political Correctness.) Cultural Marxism says all of history is determined by which groups, defined by race, sex and sexual orientation, have power over which other groups.

Whites, males, and straights have been on top, so they are oppressors, while some (not all) other races, women, and gays have been victims. All Marxism is loser-worship; cultural Marxism just redefines the losers. Its goal is to empower blacks, feminist women (only feminists), gays, etc., over straight white males.

If someone doubts the totalitarian ambitions of cultural Marxism, all he needs to do is look at most university campuses. Dissenters from cultural Marxism, student or faculty, are persecuted. More broadly, in todays America you cannot be a member of the elite if you defy the aspiring state ideology.

Not surprisingly, many Americans, probably a majority, reject cultural Marxism and its attempts to make them mouth lies. Weve seen that lately in parents efforts to keep critical race theory out of their kids schools. (Denials that it is being taught are lies; the whole of public schools curricula are shaped by the Frankfurt Schools critical theory, of which CRT is a subset.) These Americans are not looking for a fight, but they will fight before they bow and scrane to cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists, in turn, regard any dissenters as not merely wrong but evil. They may not be tolerated, rather they must be canceled: fired from their jobs, banned in their professions, rendered unpublishable, sometimes physically attacked. They are unpersons. Only through a groveling apology can their existence again be recognized. Trump voters, and millions of Americans who did not vote for Trump, will reach for their rifles before they go down on their knees.

While cultural Marxism is the ideological threat of the moment, another ideology, even more dangerous, is waiting in the wings; extreme environmentalism, sometimes called Deep Green. Deep Green environmentalism sees man as a curse on the planet whose duty is to eliminate himself. Other ideologies have called for liquidating this or that minority or social class; Deep Green targets everyone. It offers a perfect basis for totalitarianism because it argues that everything a person does, including eat and breathe, affects the environment. Currently hiding under the wings of cultural Marxism, Deep Green ideology is waiting to come forth if its protector falters. Again, tens of millions of Americans would rather fight than switch.

At present, no ideology from the right threatens freedom of thought and expression in this country. History shows such ideologies are possible; fascism and national socialism are examples. Libertarianism is an ideologyanyone who thinks free markets solve all problems should drive through a city that has no zoningbut it appeals only to a small intellectual clan and by its own logic cannot oppose freedom of thought and speech.

Conservatism is not an ideology. As Russell Kirk wrote, it is the negation of ideology. It rejects any and all attempts to remake man and society along lines dictated by some abstraction. It seeks a culture and a politics that is shaped from the bottom up by the experience of many generations. It manifests itself in customs, habits, and traditions, which vary widely from place to place, a variety conservatives embrace.

From a conservative perspective, ideology itself, regardless of its tenets, is the ring of power in Tolkiens trilogy. In the long run, it cannot be used for good, regardless of its promises. Our task is to bring our fellow citizens to see all ideologies as what they are, roads to tyranny, and to oppose them one and all. That is a tall order, because ideologies lend themselves to dumbing down, and dumbed down sells. But it is what we must do to redeem the time. Frodos road was not an easy one, either.

William S. Lindis the author, with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele, of the4th Generation Warfare Handbook.Linds most recent book isRetroculture: Taking America Back.

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Ideology and Disunion - The American Conservative

On Sunday, Hungarian voters handed the governing right-wing Fidesz-KDNP alliance a landslide win and Prime Minister Viktor Orban his fourth consecutive term in office.

Some Western commentators suggest that the contest wasnt really free. They blame the conservative governments alleged control of the media. But far from being controlled by the government, the media market has grown and diversified since Orban took power. Progressives and liberals are free to express their opinions but without a complete, Soviet-style monopoly of ideas; social traditionalists, Christian Democrats, and champions of national sovereignty also have a voice, though they often dont enjoy a dominant position.

Conservative opinions are simply free to compete with liberal narratives, which may look like "government control of the media" to Western commentators who are used to silencing noncompliant voices on the Right. "Free media" likely means liberal-only media to them.

Not in Hungary.

Still, the international establishment never tires of warning that Hungarian media are under assault. To make it official, Freedom House downgraded Hungary to "partly free," though recently leaked documents showed former director of the Soros Foundation Andrej Nosko admitting that the ranking is part of a coordinated campaign against the "illiberal" Hungary and Poland. What, then, is the media market in Hungary, a country of 10 million?

According to media research, 6.8 million Hungarians turn to conservative outlets for information, 6.7 million to liberal sources, with 6 million reading both. Most major media companies across the political spectrum are profitable. It wasnt always this way. When Orban and his conservative government came to power in 2010, there were 33 left-liberal media outlets, mostly foreign-owned. Now, there are 43, mostly Hungarian-owned. There are also five new, right-leaning, anti-Orban outlets. Together, they represent 45% growth of the anti-government, politically relevant media on Orbans watch.

Is that what a government takeover of the media looks like?

All top media outlets are liberal. Out of 29 left-wing and 11 conservative online news portals, three liberal outlets 24.hu, Telex, 444 consistently rank highest in readership. There are three conservative and two liberal TV stations. As elsewhere in Europe, there is a major state-owned Hungarian television network, the MTVA ("Royal TV"), run by government appointees. The left-leaning RTL Klub TV attracts the most viewers. In radio news, five stations lean conservative, four are liberal, and one centrist. In print, there are five conservative and three liberal dailies on offer left-leaning Blikk and Nepszava have the highest readership. Among the weeklies, out of four conservative and six liberal titles, anti-government HVG and Magyar Narancs enjoy the biggest audience.

Despite the Hungarian media markets dynamic growth over the last 12 years, there have been losers, too. Before 2010, the ownership was predominantly foreign, mostly German. Following a flurry of domestic acquisitions, media companies are now 95% Hungarian-owned, although the 5% remaining in foreign hands represent one-third of the market by income and profit.

Ironically, the government-takeover-of-the-media narrative comes not from the oppressed Hungarians, but from foreign-owned outlets whose control over Hungarys media market was successfully challenged by local players after Orbans Fidesz came to power.

The result? In Hungary, you can criticize migration, Islam, or the LGBT-movement; you can question liberal pieties. And/or you can openly and loudly oppose the conservative government.

Far from taking over the media, the conservative government has liberalized media laws and helped create a more diverse news market. There are more choices. As Hungarians vote, their media landscape reflects the diversity of opinion that the West used to have when it was still a beacon of freedom, before political correctness and cancel culture destroyed the marketplace of ideas. After 44 years of communism, thats not the path we Hungarians want to follow.

Gergely Szilvay is a Hungarian journalist at Mandiner based in Budapest.

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Hungarian media freedom is alive and well - Washington Examiner

Amazons ham-handed PR was among the reasons why it suffered one of the biggest defeats in recent labor history, as workers on Staten Island voted to join the newly created Amazon Labor Union, which was the brainchild of 30-year-old fired warehouse worker Chris Smalls.

Hes not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position, wrote David Zapolsky, Amazon general counsel in a note that was leaked to Vice. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Amazon spent millions to defeat the ALU and hired the well-connected Democratic Global Strategy Group PA shop to torpedo the union drive.

GSG has some explaining to do, especially since it worked for the Biden campaign. Joe Biden is the most pro-union US president in years.

In a sharp contrast, GoFundMe donations funded Smalls grassroots PR campaign of texts, emails and meetings with the more than 8,000 Staten Island workers.

That effort also included volunteer support and guidance from the Communications Workers of America, UNITE HERE, United Food and Commercial Workers, Office and Professional Employees International Union, and Workers Assembly Against Racism.

Smalls told National Public Radio on April 6 that hes been contacted by more than 50 Amazon facilities in the US, Canada, UK, South Africa and India about organizing their workplaces.

That should convince Amazon founder Rocket Man Jeff Bezos to spend more time dealing with his restless workforce, rather than on his space dreams.

Amazon on April 4 announced the largest deal in the commercial space industry as it signed an agreement with United Launch Alliance (Boeing/Lockheed Martin partnership), Europes Arianespace and Bezos Blue Origin for 83 launches for its Project Kuiper internet satellites.

Theres trouble brewing in Earth's biggest store, Jeff.

Though Donald Trump watches a heckuva lot of television, hes been pretty quiet about the images of brutality, carnage, mangled bodies, corpses with hands tied behind their backs and wanton destruction transmitted from Ukraine to screens throughout the world.

The silence of the former president leads one to wonder whether he is angling for his own slot on Antifake, a new program on Russias most-watched TV network.

On April 5, Antifake featured a panel that dismissed scenes of dead civilians lying on the streets of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, as stunts staged by the non-existent Nazis of Ukraine and their allies in the west. Antifake drove home that propaganda point by running FAKE across the TV screen.

Since Trump is the guy who popularized the use of fake news, he would feel right at home at Antifake.

He could even have his buddy, Vladimir Putin, call in to rage at his perceived enemies, just like Trump does at Fox News.

Real Chemistry keeps on gobbling up acquisitions, though some signs of heartburn have started to appear.

The San Francisco-based healthcare PR firm, which prefers to call itself a global innovation company committed to making the world a healthier place for all," announced the acquisition of ConversationHealth on April 5.

ConversationHealth is the 10th acquisition for Real Chemistry since the company unveiled its partnership with NewMountain Capital in 2019.

The deal comes as Real Chemistry trimmed its workforce by about 50 people due to redundancies and overlap partly due to its aggressive acquisition spree.

McKinsey & Co. alum Shankar Narayanan assumed the helm of Real Chemistry in January from founder Jim Weiss.

CPAC loves Putin-lite. The Conservative Political Action Conference will hold its May meeting in Budapest and feature Hungarys right-wing nationalist leader Viktor Orban, who just won another term as prime minister, as a keynoter.

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson is a big fan of Orban, a close ally of Putin.

Budapests Center for Fundamental Rights invited CPAC to stage its first Continental Europe conference in Hungary.

Founded in 2013, The Center says preserving national identity, sovereignty and Christian social traditions" is its mission, especially amongst the 21st centurys heightened process of "globalization, integration, geopolitical and technological changes, affecting the field of law as well.

In short, the Center wants to counter todays overgrown human rights fundamentalism and political correctness that have been affecting numerous aspects of our everyday life." It wants to turn back the hands of time to the Middle Ages.

CPAC might want to extend an invite to Putin to appear alongside his acolyte Orban. Tucker would be thrilled.

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