Jim Davidson: The origins of being politically correct

Published Friday, April 11, 2008

The idea of being "politically correct" started out as a joke in our country, but it has reached the point where it is no longer a laughing matter. For the first time in our nation's history we have to be fearful of what we say, what we write and what we think. We have to be sensitive of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive to certain groups.

Have you ever thought about where this kind of thinking came from and who started it and why? What I am talking about is an ideology, not to be confused with the common respect and decency we should always show another person because they are another human being.

If you don't already know, let me give you a little basic information to enlighten you and then give you a number of sources where you can check this out for yourself, if you have an interest in doing so. A lot of people in our nation think that being "politically correct" goes back to the 1930s, and then the 1960s, but it actually goes back to World War I days and the coming to power by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The philosopher, Karl Marx, was a social scientist, historian, and revolutionary. He is without a doubt the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. Karl Marx died in 1883 and it was left to his successor, Vladimir Lenin, to carry out his ideology. Lenin was only 13 years of age when Marx died, but he became a very ruthless person.

Lenin was responsible for the creation of the CHEKA, or the "Secret Police," to maintain power over subjects who did not want to live under socialism; they systematically killed thousands of people, not because of what they had done, but because of who they were or who they knew. The only published Soviet statistics regarding CHEKA executions were the semi-official ones provided by the Checkist Martin Latsis, limited to RSFSR over the period 1918-1920, giving the grand total of 12,733 executed, including 3,082 who took part in the rebellion.

These statistics are considered by many scholars to be decidedly understated, as they did not embrace Ukraine of the Crimea. It was here that later Bolsheviks slaughtered an estimated 50,000 people. Some historians estimate that between 1917 and 1922 up to 280,000 people were killed by the CHEKA, of which about half perished through summary executions and the other half through the suppression of the rebellion. In this climate one can certainly understand what it meant to be politically correct. In March 1919, Lenin met with other Bolshevik leaders and they changed the name of the party to "Russian Communist Party" and it was soon to become a totalitarian state, which meant they had absolute power.

Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, but communism would continue under Joseph Stalin and all the rest, only to fall in 1991. At present the only communist countries are China (since 1945), Cuba (since 1962), North Korea and Vietnam. We still have many of the vestiges of communism in the world today, and this is where "political correctness" comes into play. Two Marxists theorists, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, said the workers will never see their class interests, as defined by Marxism, until they are freed from Western culture, and particularly from the Christian religion.

As it usually does, this kind of thinking has been exported to America, and its strongest presence is to be found in some of our large universities. Let me be very clear here. This is not true for most of our fine colleges and universities, but all we have to do is follow the news each day to know which ones hold to this kind of thinking. There are two kinds of ideologies here, Economic Marxism and Cultural Marxism, and "Political Correctness" has its roots in the latter. The reason those who hold to a Marxist ideology, and there are many here in our country who want to do away with Christianity, is because in a totalitarian state (one that has complete and total power) they can never acknowledge that there is any power greater than the state.

The political correctness movement has even crept into one of our most sacred holidays. We have said

"Merry Christmas" and not "Happy Holidays," here in America going all the way back to our Founding Fathers, and more and more people are taking a stand. The Internet is a wonderful tool and can give us instantaneous information about every subject under the sun. If you would like to verify anything that I have said, go to Google.com and type in Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, The Bolshevik Revolution and The Origins of Political Correctness and read about it. As Will Rogers once said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Jim Davidson is a public speaker and syndicated columnist. You may contact him at 2 Bentley Drive, Conway, AR 72034. To support literacy, buy his book: "Learning, Earning & Giving Back.")

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