David French of National Review Online explains how Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump helps the arbiters of political correctness.
The most effective response to the unreason and ignorance of political correctness has always been reason and truth. The politically correct reading of history is so staggeringly wrong, its assessment of man so grotesquely off, that true debate feels almost unfair. For the politically correct progressive, true debate is unfair – so they do their best to shut it up and shout it down. When I was in law school I once heard free speech derided as one of the “master’s tools” used to build the “master’s house.” Can’t win a debate? End it.
The worst response to political correctness – one that is tempting to the intemperate and seductive to the actual racist – is trolling, by which you become the stereotype you claim to fight against. This is the ethos of Donald Trump and his most loyal supporters: Infuriate your foe, never back down from a fight, and never, ever apologize.
The result is a movement built on spite, in which the desire to enrage progressives creates a continuous font of speech and conduct that works mainly to confirm the progressive world view. In the name of defying political correctness, Trump and his fans do absolutely nothing to temper the worst progressive impulses and do much to appall and repulse everyone else. They leave the American people without a morally defensible choice. It’s the scold versus the asshole. The scold feels vindicated, the asshole feels gleeful, and everyone else feels despair.
Make no mistake, Trump is not beating political correctness; he’s feeding it. Every single time he insults women, attacks a judge for his Mexican heritage, passes on anti-Semitic images created by white supremacists, or indulges any of the other truly offensive reflexes that his fans celebrate as proof of his “fearlessness,” he is doing nothing more than providing the fuel for yet another decade’s politically correct fire. And by tying the GOP to his own unreason and disregard for the truth, he’s yanking from the Party of Lincoln its best tools for combating progressive narratives.
