The Effect of Political Correctness on Politics

[Geee]

American Thinker:

The late Charlton Heston once said, "Political correctness is tyranny with manners."

The rationale of political correctness (PC) is to prevent supposed minorities from being offended (the manners) -- to compel people (the tyranny) to avoid using words or behavior that may upset homosexuals, women, non-whites, the crippled, the stupid, the fat, the ugly, or any other minority group identified by those who define PC. Its primary method is the redefinition or replacement of words and behavior in order to avoid offense, to be sensitive to the feelings of minorities.

Before we can examine PC and its effect on politics, we must first understand PC's origin and purpose.

The concept of PC was developed at the Institute for Social Research, in Frankfurt, Germany, in the early 1920s. The institute considered why communism in Russia was not spreading westward. The conclusion was that Western civilization, with its belief that the individual could develop valid ideas, was the problem. At the root of communism was the theory that all valid ideas came from the state, that the individual is nothing. The institute believed that the only way for communism to advance and spread was to help Western civilization destroy itself, or else force it to.

The institute said that by undercutting Western civilization's foundations by weakening the rights of individuals through the change of speech and thought patterns, by spreading the idea that vocalizing beliefs was disrespectful to others and had to be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustice, Western civilization could be destroyed. The institute wanted to call its method something that sounded positive -- thus "political correctness."

Another communist, Chairman Mao Zedong, in China in the 1930s, wrote an article on the "correct" handling of contradictions among the Chinese people, thus giving us the PC concept of "sensitivity training."

Today we can add socialism to communism. Does the addition of that economic philosophy alter the original intent of PC in any way?

Here are two specific examples of PC and of not being sensitive.

First, a famous PC incident occurred in Washington, D.C. in 1999. David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., correctly used the word "niggardly" in reference to a particularly small budget item. This reference upset one of his black colleagues, who interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. The use of the word "niggardly" was not PC due to its phonetic similarity to the racial slur "nigger," despite the fact that the two words are etymologically unrelated. Howard was not "sensitive" or PC. He actually resigned his job, but was reinstated after a national outcry over the conflation of unrelated terms.

The cited incident (and others like it) raise the question, "Are we now to abandon the use of certain useful words in the English language in the name of sensitivity and PC?"

[Rokke]

Conservatives are absolutely their own worst enemies with regard to political correctness. It has reduced them to unprincipled milque toast, literal losers. Stick to the facts, say what you mean, and DON'T say things purely in the hopes of pleasing a particular race or "group". That makes you a racist. Like Obama apologizing for the burned korans, we lose when we bend over to try to appease groups who go out of their way to be offended. It does nothing more than feed their fire.