The death count may not be over yet. As of the writing of this article, 13 soldiers have died while some remain in critical condition. Over 30 were wounded including the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan. In all, Hasan allegedly fired over 100 rounds from two handguns within a few minutes. While Hasan was the lone gunman, he had a silent accomplice which assisted him in maintaining his status as a Major in the US Army. Despite evidence of radical Muslim beliefs, the shroud of political correctness likely made investigators hesitate to act while most of his fellow officers simply turned their heads.

Following the shooting, the “PC” media immediately avoided any references to terrorism, insisting that Hasan’s motive was unknown. The New York Times reported that he “snapped” while Gerardo Rivera on Fox News called him a sociopath and a criminal. The most ludicrous excuse for Hasan’s rampage came from NPR where Tom Gjelten attributed the shooting to “PRE-traumatic stress disorder”. Early media reports focused on Hasan’s emotional struggle regarding his deployment to Afghanistan while others interviewed his family and neighbors. I guess reports of Hasan yelling “Allahu Akbar” prior to his shooting rampage was insufficient evidence to label his motives terrorism.

We now know much more about Major Hasan’s activities leading up to the tragedy at Ft. Hood. The Associated Press reported that a Pentagon worker on a terrorism task force had looked into Hasan’s background and concluded he did not merit further investigation. The investigation concerned his communication with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen.

We have also learned that class members in Hasan’s “Masters” program had complained about his comments that the war on terror was a “war on Islam”. Another Army classmate claimed to have written to the pentagon complaining that “political correctness” prevented an intellectual honest discussion of Islamic ideology in the ranks.

But that is exactly what political correctness is intended to do, to suppress the open discussion of a sensitive subject because it may cause harm to a cause or a group. According to Jonathon Katz of Washington University, this is a totalitarian impulse and it is the root of political correctness. So what exactly is “Political Correctness”?

Katz defines PC as the narrowing of the range of acceptable opinion to those held by a small group that enforces it. It is an attempt, often successful, to coerce the majority to accept the opinion of the enforcing group by suppressing any contrary opinion and making independent thought unacceptable. It generally has a practical motivation, it wants something of value (money, jobs, special privileges) to which it has a weak claim. So it attempts to enforce its claim by ruling any disagreement outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

The origins of political correctness are found in Europe during the 1930’s at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt Germany. Attempting to find out why Communism was not spreading throughout the world, the institute blamed western society and the protection of individual rights as the culprit. They also believed that the only way for communism to advance was to help (or force, if necessary) Western Civilization to destroy itself. How to do that? Undermine its foundations by chipping away at the rights of those annoying individuals.  They began spreading the idea that vocalizing your beliefs is disrespectful to others and must be avoided to make up for past injustices.

Today, political correctness is well entrenched in our educational system, at scientific, religious and community levels, the media, the workplace and even our government. It may very well be a contributing cause of the tragedy at Ft. Hood. Had the Army conducted an open and honest discussion of Islamic ideology in its ranks, it may have honorably discharged Hasan and this whole tragedy averted. Today, more than ever, we need to demand an open and honest discussion on all sensitive issues or risk the continuing erosion of our individual rights and liberty.

This is John Galt Speaking!