The phrase politically correct has its origins in the Stalinist left. Its revival not so long ago by America’s New Left was an ominous development. Its pertinence to the present discontents points to a propensity visible now, even among mainstream liberals, for politicizing nearly everything.
There was a time, however, in American life when the personal was not considered political and the political was not regarded as personal. The distinction was, in fact, a principle central to American life – for the modern liberal republic stands or falls on the conviction that religion and politics are separable. It is this notion – that what is primordially personal (religious faith, first and foremost, but other things as well) can be made for the most part politically irrelevant – which distinguishes the limited government peculiar to modern times from all prior government, which assumed the contrary. When the personal is made political and the political, personal, it is no longer theoretically possible to distinguish public from private, and it is no longer politically possible to restrict the government’s reach. This inability brought with it considerable disadvantages in earlier times. In an era in which modern technology has extended the reach of surveillance in manifold ways, it is a catastrophe.
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