Proud To Be Victims

Speaking before the National Republican Congressional Committee on March 24, 2009 Loiuisiana Governor Bobby Jindal asked the question "do you want the President to fail" and answered

Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism. This is political correctness run amok.

Amazingly, in the very same speech Jindal claimed

We are loyal to the United States, but we don't have to be loyal to every policy. We can't allow policies like those of European socialism.

Somebody needs to explain to the hapless Mr. Jindal that the "political correctness" he proudly derides originated with opposition to things European, as this explanation (from The Myth of Political Correctness) of literature in the American university indicates. Or as a Sean O'Grady explained in Analysis: The Truth About Political Correctness- In Black And White

Yet whatever its philosophical and linguistic roots, by the 1980s it had become a rallying point for those who wanted to liberate academia from the Dwems – dead white European males – such as Shakespeare or Chaucer, and to open up the literary canon to minority groups. Or, in the words of the Stanford University student chant, "Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture's got to go."

No one can say for certain where or when "political correctness" orginated, but clearly there was a connection with the animus toward Western- European- culture. Yet the ill-informed Bobby Jindal, speaking to his ill-informed conservative (is there any other?) audience, goes for the low-hanging fruit, the easy target, of blaming European culture (when unavailable, just say "the French" over and over) and, simultaneously, the boogeyman of "political correctness."

Further, as CNN reports, Jindal boasted he would "not be brow beaten on this, and I will not kowtow to their correctness."

Yet again, the conservative as victim. In What's The Matter With Kansas, Thomas Frank observes "all claims on the right... advance from victimhood" and conservatism

....is the doctrine of the oppressed majority. Conservatism does not defend some established order of things. It accuses; it rants; it points out hypocrisies and gleefully pounces on contradictions. While liberals use their control of the airwaves, newspapers, and schools to persecute average Americans- to riducule the pious, flatter the shiftless, and indoctrinate the kids with all sorts of permissive nonsense- the Republicans are the party of the disrespected, the downtrodden, the forgotten. They are always the underdog, always in rebellion against a haughty establishment, always rising up from below.

Hatred of Europeans and posing as a victim. As always, the GOP remains the master of political correctness.