Normally, unless it's just a couple of quick links with little commentary, I put Politics type posts under the fold.

Not today.

I've fitfully tried to write this post since back in  May when It began as a collection of capsule reviews of various films and TV episodes I'd seen at a friends house in Northern Virginia. However a brief conversation we had that afternoon is far more important..and frankly has been difficult to blog about.

Now my friend and I have a lot of shared interests and we tend to agree on a lot considering the considerable differences in our world view. He doesn't believe in the second amendment, nor the tenth amendment, and is for all sorts of  restrictive zoning regulations....yet he calls himself a libertarian. Despite this intellectual incoherence he is a good man and I have developed a great deal of respect for him over the years. His views on matters of govt were likely  formed from his upbringing in the urban Northeast, specifically New York City, where life is so interconnected and dependent upon public services that the notions of individualism, and self sufficiency range from being understandably alien to simply not being understood in quite the same way these concepts are in the rest of the country. I really think that the culture in that part of the U.S. is rather more different  from the rest than is generally appreciated. My worldview, formed in the coastal southeast, is likely just as weird to him.

However, such differences in perspective as his and mine (and there are at least half a dozen distinct examples of this sort of regional outlook not to mention the myriad of ethnic perspectives)  are one of the things that have given the US such a robust ability to deal with issues...but perhaps not for much longer.

You see, at some point during the evening the conversation turned to my experiences in school and I related that for the second time my being allowed into an upper level course was being questioned...that is for the second time in a couple of years I had a fellow student in one of my classes ask how a person with my beliefs was ALLOWED to attend an upper level class.
No really....
The specific example of college idiocy discussed is not really relevant and so is hidden behind this spoiler tag
  The first case was a couple of years ago when I asked a question in a Chinese History class where the discussion had turned to misogyny in China. I asked a question that went like this 'Given the very negative examples of the Empress Dowager and the Soong sisters were there any examples of females on the national level that did not bring ruin and or horror directly or indirectly to the nation? Might those, particularly the example of the Dowager, have contributed to the problem?....This is not an exact quote, its been almost two years, but it is close...the second happened this spring and could actually be tortured into being a partisan statement. We were discussing Champa and how it was conquered by Dai Viet/Viet Nam ultimately with some limited French assistance in the 19th century. I made what seemed to be an obvious point that a conquest by an ethnically and culturally distinct people only 130 years before might have led to the schism after the French withdrawal. Specifically were the later chapters of the Indochina war partially a bid for independence  by the various polyglot peoples who identified with Champa.

In both cases the response was nearly identical, in that  female classmates interjected to question not only the premise but legitimacy of the question and in both cases wanted to know how someone who thought like me was allowed into an upper level class. In the first instance, that young lady asked the instructor to ...you know....DO SOMETHING! In that case the instructor ( who as it turns out is a survivor of one of Mao's work camps)  did indeed do something...she answered the question and asked the young lady to sit and calm down.
In the later case the instructor blanched and seemed to try to blow off the question but two young women were so agitated by it and they followed me out of the class demanding an explanation wanting to know how someone like me got into 400 level class without being ...I dunno....caught?

My friend was quite appropriately appalled and we marveled at the ability of the myrmidons to miss the point of college. I joked that I had obviously missed my political correctness codebook...
....and at that point everything changed....
My friends mood changed, he gave me a stern look and told me that amongst his progressive friends, anyone who used the phrase "Politically Correct" was considered to be a bigot because they want to be able to say such things as 'ni**er' and 'fa##ot'. He went on to say that he agreed and anyone who used the phrase...he thought less of.

Now I should have said that on the rare occasions that I find anyone spouting such passive agressive Orwellian fucktardery I think much less of them.

But I didn't....I've known this guy too long and known him to be too good a person for that.
So, I defended my position but he cut me off and flatly said that he was not going to debate this....it is a sign of bigotry, and racism.... the end.

I almost walked out...
Being called a racist comes under fighting words.


If it had been nearly anyone else it would have ended right there, but I've known him for over a decade. He is a genuinely good guy.
His "advice" however, is not just wrong, it is destructive.

Here is why....

Courtesy is a very desirable impulse...but when it is enforced by government it is not genuine courtesy....it becomes Political correctness and that is just about the greatest threat to the nations discourse there is. While not quite as bad as it was a few years ago college is like walking on eggshells and its getting worse again. A viewpoint, an opinion, a word is declared intolerant..to protect someones feelings of course...the list expands because "feelings" are fragile things, especially if one loses an argument. Racial slurs are beyond the pale of polite conversation but now we have people looking for "code words" This is a power play...to control the floor and shut down debate. It is a testament to how far we have come that Americans, by and large are disgusted by racists, so much so that calling someone a racist is the equivalent of slaping them with a glove....but without the opportunity of a duel to clear their name...racists are quite properly pariahs in polite society. This gives the truly vile a tool in Political Correctness  the number of "code words" and taboo viewpoints expands until finally....talking about POLITICAL CORRECTNESS defines one as a racist homophobe.

One could simply acquiesce and call it what it is, an Orwellian mind game to declare opposing viewpoints double-plus-ungood...of course in a matter of months my friends progressive acquaintances would inform him that the words Orwellian and double plus ungood are...well...the language of racists and homophobes...

This has been going on on for decades and a whole generation of students and now voters has learned to keep their heads down on this. Noted racist Dave Barry has some no doubt deeply offensive observations.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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