Ordinary Americans have had enough. That asphalt burial ground of political correctness is broken and sprouting the weeds of liberty.
Commentary
In eighth grade I attended Staunton Military Academy, now long defunct. One of my roommates returned from spring break with a new record album, which he enthusiastically played for me. After a couple of songs, I said: “These guys will never make it. I’d stick to the Beach Boys.”
That early lesson in my poor powers of prognostication has kept me from a lifetime of gambling or playing the market. Readers are hereby advised that my crystal ball serves best as a paperweight.
Bearing that warning in mind, here’s my take on the future: Today’s politically correct petty tyrants, sometimes known as “the woke,” will become increasingly irrelevant.
For a good while now, these enemies of the First Amendment—the federal government, certain academics, celebrities, and sundry social radicals—have had their way as they imposed restrictions on speech that violate custom and common sense. In my mind’s eye, I see them as attempting to lay an asphalt of their ideologies over independent expression and personal liberty, aiming at a paved lot, so to speak, that would bury freedom-lovers and afford them parking places for the vehicles of their secular dogma.
That scenario is changing. More and more Americans today are pushing back against these gurus of gender and race. Here are just a few examples of the fissures and weeds that are bringing this paving project to ruin.
As far back as 2018, More In Common, an international movement interested in building bridges between diverse groups of people,
reported that 80 percent of Americans dislike political correctness and regard it as a
problem. A 2021
article titled “Political Correctness Isn’t as Popular as You Think” discusses survey findings that showed that “people, even many liberal ones, are worried that we are too politically correct, and the public does not want this toxic movement to grow further.”
More recently, this spring’s pro-Palestinian protests on certain university campuses have wakened the public to the radicalism behind the façade of ivy and brick of these institutions. Some
prospective students have begun looking elsewhere to continue their education, and major donors are
cutting off gifts and funding to institutions such as Harvard and Columbia. Meanwhile,
colleges old and new that teach the values of Western civilization are thriving.
Uninfected by the radical agenda behind
diversity, equity, and inclusion, many private elementary and secondary schools are teaching the basics, such as reading, writing, and math. A good number are classical schools, such as the
Great Hearts Academies, which “are dedicated to serving families in the moral and intellectual formation of their children.” In my town of Front Royal, Virginia, a half-dozen private Catholic schools are in operation, all of which instruct students in their faith as a part of their academic program.
Inspired by such figures as swimmer
Riley Gaines, more parents and their daughters are blasting away at the boys and men who enter female sports under the guise of transgenderism. No longer cowed by the woke mob, earlier this month a crowd at a girls’ high school state track meet in Eugene, Oregon,
booed transgender runner Aayden Gallagher after he won the 200-meter race.
Also in May, former President Donald Trump drew nearly
100,000 people to his presidential campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. Note that this is Blue State New Jersey, not Florida or Texas. Were all those people dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporters? Unlikely. Many of them were just Americans wearied by the fabrications of the present administration about immigration and inflation.
May also saw Kansas City Chiefs star kicker Harrison Butker deliver a
commencement address at Benedictine College in Kansas. Standing before a largely Catholic audience, Mr. Butker derided certain woke ideas while praising the virtues of marriage, motherhood, and homemaking, all of which raised the hackles of the politically correct. This time, however, their screeches of protest, including demands that the Chiefs fire Mr. Butker, met with resistance. The audience, for instance, gave Mr. Butker a
standing ovation, and
sales of his No. 7 jersey soared.
Ordinary Americans have had enough. That asphalt burial ground is broken and sprouting the weeds of liberty.
Whatever chaos this preelection summer of 2024 may bring, a majority of Americans now see through the deceptions of these politically correct tinpot dictators, and their resistance is growing stronger. As Winston Churchill
said of another war against dictatorship: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
