This Republican pre-primary season from hell shall be known by its words, for this is the Age of the Politically Incorrect. And what an apt term that is. Politically — as well as logically, historically, constitutionally, philosophically — the frontrunners have been incorrect about damn near everything. The GOP's Trumps and Carsons have found not only partisan comfort in political incorrectness, but a grand validation.
Political correctness once meant — and to some of us, still means — a kind of amusing fussiness, a rhetorical hypersensitivity to potential offense. Its antithesis was deemed that of an unwarranted rudeness, one complicated by varying interpreted levels of said rudeness. But the latter has changed, as such things are wont to do in the English language. Political incorrectness now means, simply, the freedom to be stupid — just as stupid as you like.
Such as Ben Carson's "defense" of his interview with the professionally uncurious Chuck Todd yesterday. Carson, as you doubtless know, said on "Meet the Press" that he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation." Todd failed to follow up; elucidation is not his department. The Hill, however, did follow up. And thereupon Ben Carson delivered perhaps the stupidest line yet delivered in this age of the politically incorrect: "I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country."
There is a profound oddity here. Just as right-wing extremism ultimately arcs all the way to left-wing extremism, Carson's remark to The Hill was so incorrect — which is to say, stupid — it actually looped back to correctness. Sharia is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution, just as the Old or New Testament is inconsistent with our founding secular document. Carson can see the former, and he acknowledges it; but he's ignorant of the latter.
He dug deeper from there. "Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution." Aside from the asinine generalization (Muslims feel that …), we are agreed. I agree. John Kennedy agreed. Anyone who understands the Constitution's wholly secular basis agrees. Thus we await the good doctor's repudiation of Christianity's tenets as a part of his public, official, presidential life. We can live with that, for Carson, says he, can live with a Muslim as a presidential candidate as long as he "publicly reject[s] all the tenants of Sharia."
Deal. I'll even buy a ticket to the next Iowa Faith and Freedom convocation at which Carson speaks, just to hear him renounce his faith in the execution of his presidential duties. Indeed I hereby pledge to buy a scalped ticket at any price, no matter how outrageously high. Because such a renunciation will never happen.
Carson finished his Hill interview with a characteristic flourish of politically incorrect stupidity as the answer to everything: "We are a different kind of nation. Part of why we rose so quickly is because we wouldn’t allow our values or principles to be supplanted because we were going to be politically correct." I gather this means, in part, that "we" were free to commit genocide and practice economically liberating slavery?
Well, moving along; debating American history with an ill-read religious lunatic is an unrewarding exercise. Added Carson, "Part of the problem today is that we’re so busy trying to be politically correct, that we lose all perspective."
Such twofold irony might have choked a pachyderm of yesteryear. But not these days — not in this prodigiously stupid Age of the Politically Incorrect. As validation goes, it just doesn't get any more transparent than this.