The assault today is also more thoroughgoing because it is no longer undertaken in the name of freedom and truth, however spurious, but, strange though it sounds, against both.
George Orwell was right when he observed that the first indispensable step towards freedom is the willingness to call things by their real names. We—which is to say, our masters in the media and cultural establishment—have lost that fortitude. The triumph of “wokeness” and political correctness has encouraged an epidemic allergy to candor.
The hope is that the embrace of euphemism will alter not only our language but also the reality that our language names. And to a large extent, it is working. Unfreedom does not become freedom by calling it free. Reality continues to check the fantasies of our narratives. But the misprision can help spread and reinforce the fog of self-deceit.
There is a sense in which the triumph of political correctness erodes free speech chiefly by negative means. It promulgates speech codes, rules against ‘hate speech,’ and the like. But I suspect that its gravest damage is done by instilling a timidity of spirit, a lack of what the Greeks called θυμός, among its charges.
A reluctance to speak the truth instills an unwillingness or even an inability to see the truth. Thus it is that the reign of political correctness quietly aids and abets habits of complacency and unfreedom.
