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With quiet dignity a hooded figure revealed himself from the protective ring of trees.  Mounting a small hillock he faced the sea of expectant faces.  A measured sweep of his hands pulled back the hood to reveal a wizened face framed by a long white beard.  For a long moment not a sound was heard or movement evident in the crowd.

The robed figure examined the myriad of faces before him with watery blue eyes that shone with intelligence and understanding. What he saw before him was hope.  Hope on faces that only hours before had expressed only despair and fear.  Their faces were still haggard but fire now dwelled in eyes that had previously only contained the spent ashes of surrender. His grey cloak marked his as one of the Wise Ones; dedicated to preserving knowledge from the past so that humanity would not have to relive it. Tonight he would be reading a selection from The Chronicles of Chaos. The hushed gathering listened with an intense reverence as the old one began to read from the ancient scroll.

“At the beginning of the Twenty First century a new religion rose to great acclaim and with much fervor. Its followers worshipped an all-powerful god named Political Correctness and a host of minor deities including Diversity, Tolerance, Sensitivity and Inclusion. Its priests were called Professors and they were charged with passing on its teachings to the youth and guarding its most holy of secrets. Collectively, this priesthood was called Academia and they resided in their own communities called Universities.  Sustained by the public treasury their power grew and their prestige spread like a swarm of locusts upon the earth.

The elite of the every generation would be turned over to the Professors to be indoctrinated into the new religion. It was at the Universities that the young were taught to despise the old ways and to reject the teachings of their parents. The old traditions, cultures, holidays, religious practices, and beliefs were reviled, trampled and belittled so that they could be replaced in the minds of the young with the new teachings of the new religion. After their period of indoctrination and training the new prostheletizers of Political Correctness would be sent forth to spread its doctrine far and wide.

The fearsome deities of Political Correctness were bloodthirsty and constantly demanded sacrifices to sate their Perpetual Outrage. The lives, careers, reputations and power of countless individuals were sacrificed to appease the ever angry gods and eventually all but a brave or foolish few were forced to acknowledge their supremacy. Their power and influence was everywhere and all feared to say what they truly thought or felt for fear of the great retribution of their fanatical followers. A single word uttered in carelessness or a stray thought out of context was enough for one to be summoned to judgment before those charged with satisfying the never-ending lusts of Political Correctness.

The minor deities also were a dark and foreboding force that had to be appeased. Many were followers of the feminine Right to Choose cult and untold millions of the unborn were sacrificed in an orgy of infanticide on the blood splattered altar of Convenience. The deviant and the perverse demanded, and eventually received, the sacrifice of the once sacred institution of marriage to appease the demands of Equality. And the followers of the high priest Gore and the god Gaea demanded the rejection and reversal of the evil Industrialization. No longer would the Creator be worshipped but only the Creation and isms of Political Correctness.  So it was said, and so it was done.

With the growth of the religion of Political Correctness came the persecution of the followers of the One True religion. He who born of a virgin, nailed on a cross and known as the Messiah, Savior and King by his followers was banned from the schools and the public square. Increasingly, his followers were forced to cower behind their church doors as their dwindling leaders were toppled by scandal, arrested and punished for hate speech, or cowed by the new religion. Many of this priestly class of the Old Religion became converts of Political Correctness and even taught its doctrine in their houses of worship.

There are those who believe that the religion of Political Correctness was derived from the horrendous worship of the dark god Marxism whose victims had numbered in the hundreds of millions before he was cast out of the great temple of ideology and his followers mocked and discredited. But their last adherents had been among the Professors and many believed the worship of Multiculturalism, Diversity and Tolerance was merely the disguised worship of Marxism, resurfacing in another form. We may never know the truth.”

The Wise One stopped reading and lowered the scroll in his hand. “Let us never forget what happened, and may we never repeat it. In the end the righteous were cast down and evil was called good and good was called evil. Every knee was forced to bow and every tongue confess that there was no longer right or wrong, only different, and that the right to not be offended was the greatest right of all.”

He looked up at the crowd and said, "that is all for tonight, we will read more from The Chronicles tomorrow.”

Reverently he rolled the scroll back up and put it carefully into its resting place. Tomorrow the sun would rise again, and with it would come hope that man might once again know logic and common sense, tradition and virtue, morals and values, self-control and self-restraint. Perhaps once again man would realize that he was not merely a slave or an animal or a mindless drone but a builder of great civilizations and capable of great deeds… Only time would tell if it was too late to reverse the cataclysmic results of the Before or if the faint hope for the scattered remnant that remained in the After could ever be fulfilled. Only the Wise Ones, the Sages of Old, still said there was a chance for humanity to redeem itself. Maybe, but just maybe, that would be enough. The Wise One motioned for the crowd to rise to its feet and together they solemnly chanted the mantra of hope that bound them together and showed the way for the future:

“Learn from the Past or we are doomed to repeat it.”

“Learn from the Past or we are doomed to repeat it.”

“Learn from the Past or we are doomed to repeat it.”