Fierce Backlash Against Liberal Who Trashed PC Police

Eleven years ago, Jonathan Chait wrote the following:

“I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history…I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.”

Having interviewed Chait at the time, when he worked for the New Republic, I can attest that he is indeed a staunchly liberal writer. And earlier this month he wrote a story titled “Why History Will Be Kind to Obama.”

Which is why Chait is making waves by beating up on his own side. The Twitterverse is exploding, and some women are denouncing him, over his New York magazine piece, “How the Language Police Are Perverting Liberalism.”

He plunges into the debate at a time when liberal students have succeeded in blocking conservative speakers from appearing at some college campuses. I’ve long had trouble grasping the notion that liberalism, which is supposed to stand for free speech and free expression, can be used as a weapon to squelch someone else’s right to speak because they have opinions that are viewed as unacceptable.

It’s worse than I thought in academia, as Chait writes:

“At a growing number of campuses, professors now attach ‘trigger warnings’ to texts that may upset students, and there is a campaign to eradicate ‘microaggressions,’ or small social slights that might cause searing trauma. These newly fashionable terms merely repackage a central tenet of the first p.c. movement: that people should be expected to treat even faintly unpleasant ideas or behaviors as full-scale offenses.”

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