Keeping Up With the Leftist Lexicon

Not long ago I started “Hayward’s Lexicon of Leftist Terminology,” with these initial entries:

Populism: When the wrong person or cause wins a free election. (Think Brexit and Trump.)

Racism: Any opposition to the agenda of the left.

Democracy: Any institutional design or voting system that enables the left to get what it wants.

Diversity: Where everyone looks different, but thinks the same, and speaks in identical cliches.

Now I have a new one to add (and long overdue):

Neoliberalism: A general purpose epithet for anything that the left doesn’t like.

It’s everywhere in academia. And the latest thing to be attacked as a manifestation of “neoliberalism” is . . . the annual motorcycle meetup in Sturgis, South Dakota:

By Catherine McNicol Stock

Editor’s Note

Most of us probably don’t see the thousands of motorcyclists who roar into Sturgis, South Dakota each year as avatars for the murkier world of high finance, tax avoidance, and neoliberal economic policies. But as historian Catherine McNicol Stock writes, South Dakota reinvented itself exactly in these directions, and those Harley-riding bikers who trash the town of Sturgis each year personify those economic forces at work.

The entire article is a museum-grade example of lugubrious leftist stupidity, complaining about South Dakota’s hospitality to trusts and finance (in other words, friendly to people who want to keep their finances private from prying leftist eyes), and somehow connects it all to icky Harley riders. The author, Catherine Stock, is an “historian” at Oregon State University.

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