PC for Dummies

In the latest installment of instruction from Prager University, George Will provides the short course A Progressive’s Guide to Political Correctness (video below, about six minutes). It’s part PC for Dummies and part satire a la A Modest Proposal. Will proposes renaming a number of cites to conform to the operative requirements of PC doctrine, resulting in a song that would have to go by “I Left My Heart in Nancy Pelosi City.”

Minnesota’s state flag comes in for a drubbing, but here reality has outrun Will’s satire, if that is what it is. It is not entirely clear to me here whether Will is simply applying his analysis or satirizing PC. Perhaps both.

Professor Judith Harrington plays it straight in her 2015 Star Tribune column “As long as we’re discussing flags, how about Minnesota’s?” Subhead: “It, too, may fail to reflect current sensibilities.”

Minnesota is ripe territory for the PC police. Lake Calhoun must go, of course, but how long before we turn to the capital city insensitively named St. Paul?

Will’s witty critique raises the question whether it is possible to satirize the doctrine(s) of political correctness. Political correctness represents the left’s pure will to power. Like the French and Russian revolutions, it will consume its own. In principle political correctness should be possible to satirize, but reality may already be outstripping our poor power to add or detract.

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