So melodramatic, so sloppy, so recreationally abusive, is the terminology we have become so accustomed to. Someone does something a little tacky and they are termed not tacky but a racist, a sexist, a fascist. We now know what it felt like in the Middle Ages when someone who neglected to perform some ritual or deviated from tradition in some small way was deemed a full-blown heretic, or how it felt in the 50’s when someone with some leftist friends or who had attended a few Marxist meetings 20 years ago was deemed a full-blown Communist.

It is hard to miss a certain joy in this ritual, stylized witch hunting. A certain Blue American type these days is consumed with a lust for being offended, never feeling so alive as when finding something “problematic.” Some may consider this a sign of enlightenment. But enlightenment to what end? Is this endless outing of people as moral perverts designed to change something, or is it merely a kind of ritual piety designed to demonstrate our goodness to the PC gods?…

Ellen DeGeneres is a racist? The exploration of such a thing now elicits as urgent a response in many smart people as global warming, endemic poverty and gun control. It is time to reconsider the mission creep that has led the left from seeking to change the mechanisms of society to stirring up campfires once or twice a month about awkward witticisms, passing indications of ignorance and other eternal wrinkles of human psychology, in the name of a “social justice” that is really all about self-affirmation.

This is not progress—it’s religion.