It’s difficult even to tally, much less read, all the ripostes and rebuttals, many of which confirmed Chait’s original point by reprising even more noisily exactly the category-think he warned against. “So, here is sad white man Jonathan Chait’s essay about the difficulty of being a white man in the second age of ‘political correctness,’” wrote Alex Pareene at Gawker. Variants of this theme have rocketed around the left wing of the Internet and Twittersphere over the past 24 hours.

Yet even as Chait’s critics dismissed the reality of political correctness he decried, real world examples pile up—some absurd, others ominous. In the absurd column comes this from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York: Professors and other employees at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center have been forbidden from addressing students and prospective students with the title “Mr.” and “Ms.” because, campus leaders say, the terms may be offensive.

“Effective Spring 2015, the (graduate center’s) policy is to eliminate the use of gendered salutations and references in correspondence to students, prospective students, and third parties,” Louise Lennihan, interim provost, states to employees in a recent memo. “Accordingly, Mr. and Ms. should be omitted from salutations.”

Lennihan instructs staffers to interpret the new policy “as broadly as possible,” that it applies to “all types of correspondence, such as: all parts of any letter including address and salutation, mailing labels, bills or invoices, and any other forms or reports,” states the memo.

In the ominous column, consider this chart from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education of attempts by students to ban speakers from campus, by means up through and including violent disruption:

Disinvitation Incidents, 2000-2013

FIRE

As FIRE notes, not only are disinvitation incidents on campus rising, but so too is the “success rate” for such incidents. FIRE statistics indicate that disinvitation incidents are almost three times as likely to target speakers perceived as conservative (including those, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who would angrily disavow such a label for themselves) as those perceived as liberal or left. The campus left is reviving, and liberal university administrators are surrendering to them.

Jonathan Chait deplores the political correctness of the political left for contradicting its most fundamental values. Liberals are, well, liberal; political correctness is fundamentally and often radically illiberal. But there’s an important and fascinating pragmatic aspect to this story too, with large potential implications for national politics.

As Chait notes, political correctness is a weapon deployed by leftists against liberals. Its political effect in the larger political context is to make liberals look hesitant and weak. The inability to say “no” to transgender activists at a graduate school may not matter much in the scheme of things. But the Obama administration’s unwillingness to stand alongside the people of France at a march to condemn the Charlie Hebdo massacre does matter. The refusal to pronounce the phrase “Islamist terrorism” matters. Acquiescence to bureaucrats who order universities to suspend due process for male students accused of rape matters.