A blueprint for decline. By Frank Ellis Vol. Frank Ellis is professor of Slavic studies at the University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, Great Britain.
Ideology offers freedom from doubt, a focal point for the disaffected, a refuge from reason.
Behind the rainbow-colored mask lurks a familiar and deformed face. Reactions to PC vary from wholehearted support to contempt and horror. Tame by comparison with the American experience of PC, such proposals are seen by some as the thin end of the wedge. Here lies, I believe, the main reason for the emergence of PC from academic obscurity into the limelight of public awareness. With its grand design of collectivism, multiculturalism, and hostility to individual achievement, PC offers a custom-made palliative to the traumatized utopians who have watched the Potemkin villages of socialism collapse before their eyes.