The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order. - Michael Parenti

Indeed, what really bothers those who endlessly carp about the campus tyranny of “political correctness” is not the orthodoxy of the politically correct “tyrants” but their departure from orthodoxy, their willingness to critically explore gender, ethnic, and class topics in ways that normally are treated as taboo.

People who never complain of the orthodoxy of their mainstream political education are the first to complain about the dogmatic “political correctness” of any challenge to it. Far from seeking a diversity of views, they defend themselves from exposure to such diversity, preferring to leave their unexamined background assumptions and conventional political opinions unruffled.

They have yet to consider that republicanism might largely be a cloak for oligarchic privilege—as it often is to this day—worn grudgingly by the elites as long as it proved serviceable to their interests.