Getting Unwoke With Ted Cruz

He might be the most unwoke member of the U.S. Senate.

Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America By Ted Cruz (Regnery, 368 pages, $33) Are you woke? The very word elicits chuckles. As it should. In fact, I’m actually grateful for the word woke. It’s a silly-sounding word that nicely expresses the silliness — and silly leftists — it’s describing. Wikipedia (which a friend refers to as “Woke-pedia”) has an entry for “woke.” Quite conveniently for the, well, woke, Wikipedia claims the word is “an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning ‘alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.’ Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights.” The best parts of Cruz’s book, however, come through his autobiographical recounting of the story of his family’s life in Castro’s Cuba. That definition is convenient for the wokesters. Connecting their word’s roots to something allegedly African American allows them to respond to criticism by screaming at the top of their lungs, “RACIST!!!” They do that very well. Wikipedia further notes (rightly) that the word has become “shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice…. The term became popular with millennials and members of Generation Z. As its use spread internationally, woke was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.” Perhaps most appropriate, Wikipedia notes, as does Merriam-Webster and Oxford, “By 2020, many on the political right and some in the center in several Western countries began using the term sarcastically as a pejorative for various leftist and progressive movements and ideologies.” (READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Face to Face with the Shroud of Christ) I don’t know if we can declare the year 2020 as definitive in the annals of wokedom, but there’s no question that “woke” has become a sarcastic pejorative widely used to make fun of goofy left-wingers, and most certainly not by the politi...