Posted on 09/01/2005 7:51:07 AM PDT by Saynotosocialism
"Politically Correct" is derived from the term "Correct Political Orientation" It was first delivered in a speech by Chairman Mao tse Tung at the Yenin Rally in "Celebration of International Labor Day" on May 1st, 1939. "It was used with effectiveness by the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in order to foster conformity in thought and speech."
It has been almost a year since our family fled Northern California for greener pastures. Our town of Sebastopol, a small bucolic community north of San Francisco was one of those sleepy hamlets lost to a time when life was so much simpler. The Gravenstein apple was Sebastopol's claim to fame before the rise of vineyard acquisitions took their toll.
It was once a place where barbershops brimmed with quirky locals. It was a place of laughter, innocence and sometimes profound sadness, where right and wrong were more clearly defined. A place where best friends stood by you through thick and thin. It was a place where people spoke their minds clearly without fear of reprisal.
When did a way of life become so irrelevant and inconsequential? When did we lose our way?
The new arrivals brought with them a disdain for traditions of the past. Much to the dismay of farmers and ranchers who settled this area the newcomers supplanted these quaint relics with agenda-driven ideology; an ideology that left many in the dust. The apple orchards are mostly gone. A few holdouts remain. Our town's a different place now, a very different place. It's become a guarded, introverted, intolerant world held hostage to the insidious sway of Political Correctness.
It's a place where private conversations are no longer privy to public consumption and a land owner is threatened with imprisonment for felling trees on his own property, as the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported. It's a place where a frantic dairy farmer and his sons desperately gather up cattle set free by local anarchists. A place where flag holders to memorialize the fallen are filled in with cement. It's a place where neighbor is pitted against neighbor. In our town conformity is the convention of the day.
Those who misspeak are marginalized, and those who resist the opportunity to repent are ostracized.
What's most appalling is the arrogance of these individuals who feel they are far more adept at governing the nuances of our world than you and me. Your point of view is no longer needed in a society that no longer understands it. The end result is a place with very little personal freedom, a place where someone's always looking over your shoulder.
A friend of mine from Estonia lamented one day about his growing despair. I was taken aback when he confessed that he had more freedom under Soviet domination than living here. The previous day he was accosted by an irate neighbor. She informed him that he could no longer cut his grass due to the fact that he was murdering tiny bugs in the lawn. Even minute life she eulogized had the right to coexist. Unfortunately, bizarre outcries such as this are commonplace. Even the swatting of flies in public can invoke similar responses.
Members of a family burning brush on their property are taken to court when an oak sapling is discovered smoldering in the pile. In the town of Napa a restaurateur's business is vandalized for serving politically inappropriate cuisine (foie gras) on the menu. “Earth Liberation Front” extremists tore through the walls of the restaurant and then poured cement down the drains causing more than $100,000 dollars in damage. They also sent his family a videotape of his children at play threatening to kill them.
The second coming of the Dark Ages was upon us. I contemplated the horrifying aftermath of raising our son in a society I believed to be profoundly dysfunctional. This self-inflicted wound (Political Correctness) had essentially smothered the lifeblood out of a once vibrant community. I had growing concerns about his long term exposure to people who appeared to have lost their passion for life itself.
The cornerstones of American Democracy; Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression as put forth by our founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were now relegated to the dust bin of history. Sentences now had to be processed through an internal filter before speaking. This parsing of words became an exercise in futility, yet an essential element of survival in a place that had descended into anxiety, fear and despair. The town we once new no longer existed. The template for George Orwell's 1984 was complete.
Our town had become a place where extremism had not only taken root but flourished and became the norm. Fanatical ranting replaced objectivity with a singularity of purpose. It got to the point where everything had an agenda. Every single event, every single action within the community was always reduced to the same political point of view. The rage from within became a self fulfilling prophecy.
This Cancer (political correctness) had successfully metastasized into every fabric of the human equation affecting the outcome of every interaction. There was no reasoning with these folk. Their world had been reduced to a one way street.
It was time for us to leave this place before it consumed us. But where would we go? I have always subscribed to the notion that there existed an amicable place that resisted the present and perpetuated the past.
A hamlet lost to time, a “Bedford Falls”. * In a moment's notice I could conjure up the tattered black and white vistas of a place and people long distant in the past. It was the past that gave me the greatest solace.
I entertained a desire to surrender to dreams that might have been. I journeyed the back roads of this land in search of such a place. I deciphered cryptic colloquialisms at town hall meetings. At the local diner over bacon and eggs I was given seminars on shearing sheep. Anywhere people congregated I'd be there taking in some local color.
In Baton Rogue I stumbled upon a woman who baked the finest pies outside of the Adirondacks. I learned of her blue ribbon glories and dismal setbacks due to faulty crust continuity. In Vermont I traversed covered bridges groaning from the weight of vehicles while I dreamt of places steeped in dreams.
In the end we settled upon a place in the Carolinas that gave us the freedom to breathe. It had taken us years of fits and starts and many more ambling down dusty roads and backwaters.
I no longer suffer the consequences of speaking my mind. The basic tenets of our new world are a balance between Democratic and Republican ideals. It's a healthy mix that brings opposing viewpoints to the table in the search for common ground. The only avenue we've ever desired was a two way street.
When extremism takes root (whether right or left) it eats away at the very fabric of our society.
Now and then I think about the desperate one's we left behind. The friends who for a variety of reasons are unable to leave. To this day I cannot fathom how a people can exist inside a vacuum. A place of such profound dysfunctionality defies human reason.
* (Bedford Falls, the town from the Frank Capra movie “It's a Wonderful Life” starring Jimmy Stewart.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Prete [ wolfgang99@bellsouth.net ], a graduate of Rutgers University, is beginning an import business in Asheville, N.C. He resides in a nearby town with his wife and son.
The only effective way to stop them from coming is to arrest their employers.
How on earth did you pull your response from the post?
I'm still chafed at having some Taiwanese mommy get in my face over smoking a cigar, in the open air, in a public park.
On the Fourth of July.
Let Freedom Ring.
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He left a socialist, PC nutfarm for Asheville?
How do you feel about the thousands of new inhabitants this week in Houston?
Great post.
I agree. Unless we put pressure on employers, there will be no way to stop the tide of refugees pouring from Sebastopol, California to North Carolina.
(?)
I'm stayin' and fighting back.
I have too much love for the area and California to forsake it. I am politically active and go to way too many meetings.
Proud member of the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade and Klamath Bucket Brigade as well.
How about the enviro-nazi that planted an endangered plant to stop some much needed housing in Sebastopol. Idiot left potting soil at the site.
The only effective way to stop them from coming is to arrest their employers.Employers? Or enablers? In either case it's the government.
How does moving away solve anything?...You can run but you can't hide.
Excellent.
I also reside in a town nearby Asheville. The beginnings of the same affliction the author of this piece are taking firm root in Asheville though fortunately the small surrounding communities haven't succumbed (yet).
I beat him by 12 years, moving from Silicon Valley to North Carolina in 1993. However, his selection of Asheville makes me wonder if he really is serious about getting away from the wackos. One of my first business calls was in Chapel Hill at BellSouth. I came out of the building for lunch, and was shocked -- I thought I was back in Berkeley or Santa Cruz, in some sort of time warp!
Chapel Hill is down the mountain a ways from Asheville. You can't really compare the two although Asheville has it's share of fruits and nuts.
Another thread that I had wanted to start but now won't have to. Yes, I too abandoned Northern California in early August 2004 because I just couldn't take it anymore.
Young single women, even if 5% understood that 6000 years of history justified the Iraq War...would say "but I am against it because there has got to be a better way."
The town of Sebastopol was, indeed, particularly bad...with a local "farmer" (probably a rich leftie) using an old horse drawn carriage to prop-up a particularly obnoxious anti-Bush sign...that was still in pristine condition 2 months later when I drove by again!!
Local Christian community was struggling.
But the Christian community of Northern California was also more politically correct than I have ever known. A huge 5000 member Russian church south of Sacramento on Jackson Avenue...has a strict rule of no kissing before marriage (here in Russia, there are no such ridiculous cults - these people ran away from the former Soviet Union in order to be intolerant). The place scared me more than the leftie hangouts of San Francisco and that is saying a lot.
I have lived a lot of places and Northern California is the most intolerant place I have ever known. Southern California, however, was cool for me. I loved San Diego.
I'm familiar with the area he speaks of - and the transition to a place where you can speak your mind parallels my move from Madison, Wisconsin to Northern Georgia. The suppression of contrary opinion in Madison, particularly on the University campus (where they pay lip service the the "constant sifting and winnowing" of ideas) was a large burden that lifted on my arrival in the Atlanta area.
I am quite aware of the location of these cities, and they are both equally wacko. The main difference is that there aren't as many Wiccans in Chapel Hill, but just as many hippie has-beens.
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