Buttigieg's Political Correctness is Going to Backfire

Few words are better known in American political thought than the following: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg suggests removing author Thomas Jefferson’s name from the Jefferson-Jackson dinners, so as not to show Jefferson, a slave-owner, undue honor.

At best, Buttigieg’s comments evidence an agenda pushing more political correctness. At worst, they undermine the very laws America is built upon.

If Buttigieg truly believes naming a dinner after a slaveholder—even one whose thoughts shaped a nation—is too much of an honor, then adhering to the philosophy and writings of such a man would seem to be an even greater wrong.

The American Declaration of Independence, for example, is one of Jefferson’s most famous writings. Though not legally authoritative, it has contributed to legal decisions, legislative action, executive action, and political advocacy. Its position on the equality of all persons has served as the basis for promoting women’s suffrage and gender identity, and ironically, eliminating slavery—the very wrong Buttigieg uses to disqualify Jefferson. But by some standards, this devotion to our founding principles honors the Declaration’s author—more so than a dinner ever could. If Buttigieg is to be taken seriously, then surely this honor is unfounded, and the reforms that propagate Jefferson’s influence should be held in question.

Similarly, the American Constitution, the basis of over 220 years’ worth of legal precedent was developed by 55 delegates, about 25 of them owned slaves. By Buttigieg’s reasoning, the authority America gives this document would also seem to offer too much honor to the slaveholders who penned it.

Worse yet, if adhering to the law shows too much honor to its flawed authors, then Buttigieg’s reasoning suggests that few laws deserve adherence. Although no Americans today own slaves, most would likely agree that our founders, presidents, politicians, and even presidential candidates are far from perfect, and have perhaps not done nearly as much good as Jefferson. Therefore, if following the precedents Jefferson established offers him too much honor, surely following the laws these men and women establish also shows too much honor.

If Buttigieg were right, America could be left without reliable laws, leaders, or founding documents. It’s probably for the better therefore that the Indiana Mayor back peddled on the extremity of his remarks during Sunday’s Fox News town hall. There, Buttigieg noted that he had no intention of renaming the Jefferson boulevards of America or blowing up the Jefferson Memorial for the honor it does to a slaveholding president. Rather, he said he only meant to encourage thinking twice about the names of events in light of how “burning an issue” racial equity is today

But if this is Buttigieg’s position, then he is pushing a line Americans are both tired of hearing and to which we are strongly opposed: that we need to be more politically correct. According to a 2018 NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll of 1,075 American voters, 52 percent feel we do not need to grow more politically correct by being more sensitive about others. A 2018 poll by More in Common, an international initiative to build stronger, more united communities, interviewed 8,000 respondents and found that 80 percent believe political correctness has gone too far.

One respondent, a 28-year old voter told the researchers, “I have liberal views but I think political correctness has gone too far, absolutely. We have gotten to a point here everybody is offended by the smallest thing.”

While political correctness applies to more than just racial sensitivities, Merriam Webster, Cambridge Dictionary, and Encyclopedia Britannica include racial sensitivity as a primary example of politically correct behavior. Moreover, the More in Common study found that for racial sensitivity in particular, 69 percent of Americans across the political spectrum say people are too sensitive. Based on Sunday’s comments, Buttigieg seems to be one of them.

Take Buttigieg’s comments at face value or look to his revised sentiments—either way, American voters should be skeptical. With his first stance, Mayor Pete rejects the authors of American history and law. With the second, he shows that he is pushing an agenda Americans know and reject. Neither position sounds much like what Americans are looking for in our next president of the United States.

Snarking too much about this guy’s sexual proclivities, and not enough on his Marxist politics, could backfire for us.

We need to understand, he yammers on & on about his gayness precisely to distract from, & deflect questions about, his Marxist politics.

Re: the article, it’s spot on.

The far left’s GOAL has always been far beyond the mere removal of slaveowners’ statues.

The left’s goal has ALWAYS been the overthrow of the Founders’ words & principles which laid the groundwork for equality under the law and the abolition of slavery.

The left wants this country’s laws and constitution torn up & replaced with a totalitarian dictatorship built on Lenin’s & Mao’s group identity politics, where the “in” group can fluctuate at the tyrant’s whim, and the “law” is whatever the tyrant says it is, at a given moment.

We need to nail this guy at every opportunity, as to what he’s really about. His homosexuality is just a footnote, a subset to his— and his constituency’s— overall agenda.

"At best, Buttigieg’s comments evidence an agenda pushing more political correctness. At worst, they undermine the very laws America is built upon." - Buttegieg

This Harvard-educated, but historically-impaired candidate misses critical and essential understandings of the unique place in the history of nations America's intellectual and freedom-loving founders occupied, resulting from his indoctrination into the Progressive ideology of recent decades.

Buttegieg: just another college-educated, constitutional illiterate, when it comes to understanding the ideas of liberty that the founding generation understood and laid out as the framing principles upon which America's Constitution would be formed.

""We’re either going to be the country that was bequeathed to previous generations and to you, or we’re going to be something else," . . . valley of decision . . . ." - Steve Bannon

He's correct.

Below are the words of the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address. Jefferson laid out what might be considered to be an appropriate description of the philosophy and role of an American presidency:

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
- enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural

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