Manners and Etiquette go hand in hand, but are not the same. Etiquette is a set of rules dealing with exterior form. Manners are an expression of inner character. According to Emily Post, perhaps the most influential American writer on etiquette in the twentieth century, “manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.” Manners are common sense, a combination of generosity of spirit and specific know-how. Rules of etiquette are the guiding codes that enable us to practice manners. Most commentators would agree with Emily Post and add that rather than being stiff, rigid rules, proper etiquette is meant to help people get along with each other and avoid conflict. Respect, kindness, and consideration form the basis of good manners and good citizen-ship. Etiquette becomes the language of manners. Rules of etiquette cover behavior in talking, acting, living, and moving; in other words, every type of interaction and every situation.

Originally used by old-guard communists to mean toeing the party line, the term “politically correct” was resurrected in the 1970s and early 1980s by rightist writers and activists, who used it in an ironic sense to mock the Left’s tendency toward dogmatic adherence to “progressive” behavior and speech. The term entered general use in the late 1980s, when neoconservatives adopted “political correctness” as a disparaging name for what they believed was rigid adherence to multicultural ideals on college campuses. Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education (1992) became best-sellers indicting academic political correctness. They argued that academic extremists had corrupted higher education through, among other things, affirmative action in admissions, speech codes, and the substitution in the undergraduate curriculum of recent literature by women and minorities for the classics of Western civilization. Proponents of multiculturalism defended expansion of the curriculum and greater diversity within the undergraduate student body as a means of strengthening democracy. They also argued that conservatives often distorted the views of academic liberals, invented widespread oppression from isolated incidents, and used charges of political correctness to silence their opponents.