Vocabulary Word of the Day

OK, so I do one of these about six times a year. But, I've been ruminating on political correctness, which has it's origins in Marxism, so here you go: The word is Zampoliti

Zampoliti were Red Army political/cultural officers. One was assigned to (infllicted on) every unit, and was responsible for the maintenance of ideological purity. Zampoliti monitored all speech and thought, and set errant Soviets back on the straight and narrow when they drifted from unquestioning admiration of all things Commie. Can't have those conscripts poking fun at socialism, after all. Why, they might get all cynical and pretend to work or something.

Zampoliti were the thought police, and Orwell would have been proud...

Most of the time, their mere presence was all that was required to stifle independent or critical thought. However, the unit Zampolit could and did rat people out to Moscow, and ruined many a career.

This relates to modern PC in a rather sick way: Today, Zampoliti are alive, well and entirely homegrown. They're our own children. We pay dearly to have them transformed into political officers by our "educational" system. PC indoctrination begins at an early age in America, and reaches its apogee in college, with disastrous results for society. PC is censorship, censorship which works by instilling fear of the truth in people otherwise capable of apprehending it. PC prohibits the telling of many truths about our predicament. Of course, our predicament is dire, and these truths need telling.

I ran across this excellent video on the origins of PC by way of Billy Beck's blog two--four. It chronicles the entire sordid history of this form of censorship.

Watch it. Forward it. Do something to stem the tide.