Inside America's war over political correctness

How the drive to forge a multicultural America committed to affirming differences has sparked an equal-and-opposite anti-multicultural backlash

The new P.C.
(Image credit: Illustration by Lauren Hansen | Image courtesy iStock)

Donald Trump loves to denounce those effete liberals who are overly focused on being "politically correct."

In some ways, this isn't new. The term "politically correct" has been around for a long time. As a young conservative in the early 1990s, I remember perusing the ads for witty anti-PC T-shirts at the back of National Review. My favorite listed two columns of terms: "Real" words and politically correct alternatives: "Fat" contrasted with "Gravitationally Challenged"; "Stupid" contrasted with "Intellectually Hampered." And so on.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.