[sevenless]

More accurately, complaining about left-wing political correctness has won the Right votes for decades, while even Hillary Clinton has done the odd bit of racist dog-whistling.

> It is perhaps the most powerful meme that has ever been invented.

"Heretic", "heathen", "infidel", "unpatriotic", "traitor", "communist", "un-American"...

Religious and nationalist political correctness is so pervasive it's hard to even recognize it as a form of PC.

[carsongross]

Has anyone been fired in the last 50 years for any of those epithets?

[sevenless]

Have you seen any prominent politicians propose substantial cuts to the military budget lately? Or evaluate Christian beliefs negatively, or say the USA is anything other than the greatest nation in the world?

There's a bit more at risk than being fired, too. How about being willing to criticize Islam in public?

[carsongross]

There are plenty of critics of military spending on both the left and right in the U.S. and it isn't a career ender for a normal human to advocate it. Nor is it a career ender to say you are a marxist or to criticize America. If you talk about The Bell Curve, however...

Islamists being willing to kill for their religion is its own thing, and doesn't (or, at least, didn't) have much to do with the western intellectual environment.