Lenin, Stalin, and the other creeps who created the Soviet system of totalitarianism in the early twentieth century, were far from the brightest maniacs ever to play at the game of evil dictator; but they did make a few effective innovations that enabled their rule to last much longer than it otherwise might have.

One thing they figured out early on was that the best way to stifle all potential dissent was to require subjects to vow adherence to the regime and/or the party line in some form every day. Failure to articulate the required expression of loyalty on any given day, or even to express it with less than the mandated degree of enthusiasm, would get you marked as a troublemaker. You could then be deprived of your job, of deprived of all food, or you could even get sent off to the Gulag.

Subsequent versions of this practice have been used by regimes in places such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, and of course North Korea. The Maoist “struggle session” — where the designated victim of the day is forced to humiliate himself and confess to various crimes he did not commit — was a particularly obnoxious yet widespread form of the art.

I bring up this subject today because reports have been reaching me from various young people that a nasty form of this totalitarian orthodoxy enforcement is now spreading like a cancer here on our shores….

If you have been paying any attention whatsoever, you have to have noticed the recent rapid transformation of the progressive left movement into a crazed Maoist cult.

Yes, the phenomenon of “political correctness” — meaning a leftist orthodoxy enforced among willing participants who think themselves sophisticated — has been around for a long time. We even used that term back when I was in college 50 years ago.

But recent events take the phenomenon to a whole new level. Back in the 70s my friends and I could stand aside from the politically correct crowd and laugh at them as second raters lacking the ability for independent thought.

Now if you are in the wrong place there is no more standing aside and no more laughing. Whole swaths of major institutions, most notably essentially all of academia and the media, plus many large corporate entities, no longer brook any dissent from progressive orthodoxy. One slip and the wrath of the mob gets called down upon you. . . .