Reading a bit of history, I think the flak Gen Patton got for "slapping a soldier" is perhaps one of the first big instances of political correctness.
Bill Lind, "The Origins of Political Correctness"
http://www.academia.org/lectures/lind1.html
[PC is the leftist/liberal method to attempt to censor speech and ideas.]
I had heard Neal Boortz say that the phrase politically correct was used by the Russians during the Bolshevic revolution.
When I was at UW-Madison, the city council had a proposal to change "alderman" to "alderperson" to remove gender bias. I wrote them a letter suggetsing "alderthing", to remove species bias as well. It was a natural for them, but they didn't bite.
I believe that PC was not taken from that source.
It is a fairly modern term, derived from the notion that Politicians stated things in terms couched not to offend their constituency. Also PC came from another idea, Diplomacy.
In both cases, PC was something the Politicians were, not the individual citizens. It became enmeshed with the population when it was seen that by forcing others to some kind of speech regulation (PC), through mention of the term PC in the media, that one could get away with more.
Kind of like the laws in the Quran. One for every deviancy known to man, and some we don't want to know. To enable them to get away with evil. To enable the lawless to rule the unprotected.
Goodspeak? PC? same
bump
Bump!