ABSTRACT
The current issue of Commentary has a very funny article by Wendy Shalit, an undergraduate at Williams College, on how life among the politically correct goes these days on an elite campus. The textbook wars, for instance, show that each racial, ethic, and religious tribe now expects the power to judge and veto what is written about it. Some of this demand is normal democratic politics. But post-everything arguments provide the intellectual cover: if all stories are valid and all cultures are equal, then nobody but a member of the tribe can write its history. Nowadays it is best to be wary of movements with large blazing truths in hand and the firm conviction that petty, pesky, literal truth therefore almost doesn't matter. Our century has seen a lot of this argument—that dishonesty or indifference to truth is justified by one's commitment to a cause.
