Yes, I'm perfectly familiar with the origins of the term, as a means of enforcing ideological purity by doctrinaire Soviet Communists. But it is not limited to leftists. On the Right, there are certain things you cannot talk about or do, and others that are accepted by all in the faith, and failing to say or do them continuously is righteously condemned. To pick some rather trivial, but telling, examples, consider how much hell Obama got from the Right because he forgot to wear his flag lapel pin, or the kid I knew in high school who was beaten up because his religion forbade him from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. From my own experience, when I first began posting here on the Zone because of my interests in science, I soon learned that every comment I made that did not meet someone's standard of right wing political correctness was immediately challenged, even though the post where it appeared may have been on a totally innocuous, politically neutral subject.

I agree that what we loosely term as "political correctness" can be abused, and carried too far, even if the intentions are noble. I also agree its misuse is not limited to one side. But to dismiss anything we don't want to hear, or wish to discredit out of hand as "political correctness" is itself political correctness.

I don't like the Muslim religion. In fact, I don't particularly care for any religion. They are all based on the fallacy that the faithful have the right, and the permission of the almighty, to persecute the infidel. This may not be present to the same degree in all the religious, in all religions, or in all the sects within a religion, or in any particular religious community over historical time, but it remains the fundamental defining concept in all religion. And I get especially suspicious when I see fear and nationalism mixed into the equation. Add racism to that mix, and I get paranoid. I have skin in this game.

Maybe I'm just one of those increasingly irrelevant '60s folks, but I get very suspicious when I see that mechanism hijacked for political reasons, or in the service of racism or bigotry of any sort. I was brought up in an era when far too many evil and ugly people thought that way. Maybe that's the origin of my political correctness.

If we are at war with Radical Islam, fine, lets fight it the same way we fight wars with Christians and Europeans.