Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism

She said that institutional racism isn’t real — and lost her news job

One of the most interesting things about totalitarian humanism is the way that it bypasses traditional methods of censorship imposed by State and Church, and merely farms it out to corporations (the economic arms fo the state), the media (the televangelism of totalitarian humanism), and the universities (the megachurches of totalitarian humanism).  Another interesting aspect is the way that it relies primarily on economic and professional sanctions as the method of enforcement rather than a criminal prosecution (at least in the US so far, some other nations use criminal prosecution as well). This is actually the form of ideological enforcement that was primarily relied upon by the comparatively milder Communist regimes like Hungary, Yugoslavia, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia during the latter part of the Cold War period (with jail being a backup measure), as opposed to Russia which relied heavily on psychiatric incarceration, or Romania and Albania, where dissidents were summarily executed.

Within the context of the present system, the best way around this would probably be to extend First Amendment jurisprudence to all state-aligned institutions. Originally, the Bill of Rights was thought to apply only to the federal government (because the individual states were considered to be semi-independent nations at the time). As the states and localities increasingly became administrative units due to increased centralization and industrialization, the Bill of Rights was eventually applied to the states and localities as well. Nowadays, we have other institutions like corporations, mass media, tech companies, and universities that are often as large and powerful as many state and local governments, and which are aligned with, interconnected with, and heavily funded by the state. It is time to extend the Bill of Rights to these institutions as well, with exceptions for religious institutions (churches and religious schools and colleges, not businesses like Chik-Fil-A), genuine private businesses (non-incorporated), and genuine voluntary associations (like the Birdwatchers Club). Ideally, this wouldn’t be necessary and we would have total freedom of association and nothing but voluntary communities, but that’s not the world we live in.

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