Prometheus 6

Perhaps the reason the national conversations always sputter out is that they start off too ambitious. Rather than tackling America's fundamental problems, we could start by talking about how we should talk.

I am taking the unusual step of pretending the title and first few paragraphs of this Jonah Goldberg op-ed simply do not exist

For the right — not to mention the creators of "South Park" — political correctness can be the gift that keeps on giving. The earnest leftists of the academy who seriously use "herstory" for "history" or "ovular" instead of "seminar" make it easy to discredit the entire PC project as a lot of pretentious, even Orwellian, nonsense.

But pointing out these excesses have costs for conservatives too. Standing up to political correctness has become an unlimited warrant to be rude for its own sake. And if you catch flak for it, you can just say you were defending free thought. Ann Coulter, for example, justifies her cruder barbs and insults on the grounds that she's pushing back against the liberal thought police. Sometimes she's even right. But calling John Edwards a "faggot" is hardly a triumph of conservative principle.