In the 1960s, the term “politically correct” was used by both Democrats and Republicans in a non-derisive way. But as Joshua Florence noted, things changed in the 1990s:
Read Full Article »Republicans believed the anti-war protests during the late ’60s to be “politically incorrect” and Democrats considered support for civil rights legislation to be “politically correct.”… The late 1990s saw another shift in the phrase and it was soon “used every which way—straight, ironically, satirically, interrogatively.” Political correctness was no longer a compliment, but a term laced with partisan feeling, owned by the left and despised by the right …
Conservatism, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is a tendency or disposition “to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions,” including, but not limited to the American vernacular. Conversely, liberalism is a “belief in the value of social and political change in order to achieve progress.” It therefore makes sense that those with liberal ideologies continue to institute new rules of language and speech.
