Posted on 09/05/2001 9:44:31 PM PDT by gcruse
Political Correctness Is Wrong
By Derk Jan Eppink, a member of the cabinet of
European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein.
European imports of American products, especially cultural ones, have
always been a hot topic for pseudo-intellectuals, political militants and the
French government. I too would now like to join the ranks and protest
against a political phenomenon being rapidly exported from America and
not just to Europe, but world-wide: political correctness. Though
U.S.-inspired PC rantings cannot of course be blamed for the whole
fiasco, the Racism Conference in Durban, South Africa is to a large degree
a product of it.
This is because political correctness forces politicians to conform to the
agenda of any minority that claims victim status. It presses the media to
self-censor itself and restricts scientists to investigate only what is
perceived relevant to the group in question. Other professions are similarly
restricted, but the three named above are among the most important for a
healthy civil society. Its restrictive quality explains why political correctness
contains totalitarian elements and why, in turn, it becomes a tool of
totalitarians.
PC began its long road to its present exalted status with the American
protest generation of the 1960s, which not coincidentally also made cult
figures of such totalitarians as Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh and Che
Guevara. Then as now, its practitioners were attracted to it out of a
combination of liberal guilt and a fetishistic attachment to egalitarianism.
The egalitarian myth implies that all members of the group are of equal
value to society, that they desire comforts and risks in equal measures and
should hold identical opinions.
Various Stages
PC gets established through various stages, and it is in identifying them that
we gain an insight into the Durban circus.
Stage one is the recognition of victim status. Representatives of a
group put forward the claim that over a certain period, present or
past, they or their forbears have been treated unfairly. (Note that
whether the offending activity has ended or not makes no
difference.) A self-appointed leadership of the group then tries to
convince as many people as possible outside the group of the
justness of their cause.
They then find a "victimizer." For racial minorities in America this was
"white people." For feminists this was "men." For those whose inferior
cultural products could not compete with the classics, this was the
dictatorship of the ancients. When these three groups united through
political expediency, the composite victimizer became the "dead white
male."
Stage two is the negotiating process. The "representatives" of the
"victims" then demand compensation from elected officials, who will
acquiesce to such demands either out of feelings of guilt or simply to
gain re-election. Compensation could be monetary or through some
form of positive discrimination with regard to access to jobs or top
universities. A free society acknowledges that recognition stimulates
self-esteem and, purely for the self-interested reason of correcting
social pathologies, may give in and accept some of these demands.
But such compensation is not always enough for practitioners of PC
(which is really cultural Marxism), which leads us to stage three, the
demand for rewritten history. This stage transcends a minority's
freedom from majority dictatorship and obtains the obverse: the
minority's imposition of an agenda on the majority. Thus some
homosexual "leaders" are not content with demanding that the
heterosexual majority tolerate their lifestyle, which is a legitimate
request, but they insist on "affirmation."
The leaders of the group then claim an institutional place in society and a
legitimating role in history. It becomes "un-PC" to point out that they may
not be representative even of their group's views. It is sufficient that they
speak on behalf of the "oppressed." And it's not just the present that must
be made to accord with these political considerations; history too must be
reinterpreted to give the group centrality, and assign guilt. A wrongdoing of
many years ago, for example slavery, is examined according to today's
criteria.
In stage four, words that hitherto were anodyne become suspect. In
the United Kingdom the very word "Britain" becomes an object of
controversy because it is deemed to imply a hidden form of racism.
According to the Committee on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain,
the words "Britishness" and "Englishness" have "a systematic and
racial connotation." The "B-word" becomes an obstacle to a
multicultural society.
'New Moral Order'
Finally, we get stage five: a "new moral order." It is indeed, because
the bearers of cultural Marxism impose a framework that binds the
freedom to speak and (they hope) think. They may no longer
dominate the economic infrastructure, given that Marx lost that
battle badly, but so they try to dominate the political, cultural and
historical superstructure.
The consequences -- however un-PC it may be to point this out -- are
antiliberal. Whoever infringes the rules is instantly charged with "hate
speech," and as with all totalitarianism, to be charged it to be convicted.
And the worst thing about is that nobody has won anything. Members of
the groups that were identified as victims will no longer feel part of an
open, free society, but will be force-fed myths that will lead them to see
other groups as the enemy.
By now it should have become clear that PC threatens free society. It
causes group thinking and enforces conformity through intimidation. It
smothers debate and worsens problems. In a free society all may say what
they want, dress as they please, eat what they like and pray to the God
they believe in. The community, even the world community, is better
served by an open debate and intellectual challenge than by a "new moral
order" that seems good but isn't.
-- From The Wall Street Journal Europe
What of the proposition that people want to live in huge but enclosed nation states?
Who's right or PRIVILEGE was it to impose that on the rest of the people?
Is it too late to clone Elvis?
I see no difference between that and choosing
to live in a gated community. Is it a bad thing?
I also find it necessary to have a lock on the
door to my home. Now I need a lock on
my betraying thoughts, else I lurch into hate
crime.
Who's right or PRIVILEGE was it
to impose that on the rest of the people?
Impose the nation state? The will
of the people who live in it, I suppose.
I sort of like it, myself.
When I was a kid we used to say "I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it". That is the American way. Now we charge people with hate crimes, that is the Soviet way.
Political Correctness is sensorship!
Uh... Isn't political "correctness" coming from all sides of socialism, including the E.U. and U.N.?? Why does this author solely blame the U.S.?
for soap and..er... hehehe
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