This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
This morning's panel was, unfortunately, off-the-record. Rules are rules. But I thought Ricochet might be interested in discussing the same questions independently. Perhaps later I can persuade some of the people who said particularly interesting things to say them again, on camera.
The questions: What exactly is "political correctness?" Where does this idea come from, historically? What are its effects upon science, government, the public at large? Is it a single thing? How dangerous is it, really?
I'm perfectly at liberty to discuss my own contribution to this conversation, which was to note that 1) We had quite some difficulty defining the term in a way that unified all of our examples; and 2) However you define it, basically, it came from the Soviet Union.
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Jun '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Easy first question. Political correctness is a form of censorship designed to truncate speech and impose on any discussion an accepted truth from which no deviation is allowed. Next question, please.
Jun '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
~Paules, I don't accept the word "truth" as in "accepted truth." If something is true acceptance in implicit by definition. A politically correct opinion is not necessarily true it is merely "accepted." Political correctness deals in memes, some of which are false, that are passed down from a quasi-authority but are not necessarily true.
Dec '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Political correctness is lying, distorting or otherwise obscuring the truth in political discourse so as not to offend the listener(s), particularly if the participants are on the political left.
The idea comes from the political left.
Its effects upon science, government, and the public at large are devastating, as all evil begins with a lie.
How dangerous is it, really? Exceedingly. It is an existential threat to western civilization, as are most policies and practices of the political left.
Mar '11
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
"Political correctness" is in my experience defined by what it is not: "That is NOT 'politically correct.'" But they never say "politically incorrect." The maker of such pronouncements is always someone of the left having or feigning "authority." They call out the offender or the offense by the benign sounding term of censorship: "inappropriate/not appropriate." Therewith all political sins are called out and covered. And when the ante needs upping, "hate" and "race" and their various iterations are universal sobriquets. The left, like my two-year old granddaughter in the face of being told "No", always responds "You no say me that word."
Nov '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
I think everyone agrees, Cas, but Paules was merely putting words in the mouth of the PC purveyers. In fact, by "truth" they mean precisely "accepted truth". Witness Obama's new "Ministry of Truth" (oh, pardon me, that's from "1984" -- I mean "Information and Regulatory Affairs"). Their whole business, after all, is the conflation of "truth" with "accepted truth". The whole point of using the term is to highight this fact.
Nov '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
I believe there was something very akin to the Ministry of Truth in Stalin's regime, from whose Russian name this phrase derives. I believe Bill Whittle mentioned this in a recent video essay.
I take the term to mean the shaping of discourse in support of a predetermined narrative by censuring and even censoring serious mention of certain words, phrases, data and memes, or taking certain positions in public discourse.
While it is certainly true that such may be done from any political perspective it appears to be almost exclusively practiced by the political left, in particular Communists, Socialists and "soft-socialists", Progressives and activists for various identity groups seeking entitlement and empowerment through manipulating public perceptions. Indeed, challenging PC politics appears to have become almost the exclusive domain of the political right. A few brave leftists chime in -- they must be acknowledged.
May '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
I'm gonna say it's a shibboleth. Which as many might know, is a creature from HP Lovecraft, that struck fear even into the pentfurcated hearts of the Elder Beings.
A little pseudo-Boccacio (I just love the phrase "massy hammers":
Feb '11
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Can we have some Potter Stewart here?
Jun '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
We hav'ed place for people like you. Just east of Ural Mountains. Eez like summer camp only colder.
Jun '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
I agree with you, Claire: it's Commie brain washing -- seriously. Think how many times and how many people have to qualify what they are saying nowadays with: "I know it's not politically correct to say this, but...." In a way, one has already lost the argument when that is said. The items that political correctness deals with are all highly charged left-right issues. It's PC to call someone pro-choice but not pro-abortion, for example. There is no equivalent on the other side.
Like so many euphemisms of the Left (regardless of who coined the term), it's designed to go after the people in the middle, the decent people of America who are too busy to follow the details and often make choices in their voting and their other forms of support that are completely at odds with their own deeply held beliefs.
Just think about speech codes on college campuses. How could this come about? People in the middle think it's all about using decent language and supporting comity among students, faculty and public speakers. Informed people know it's only about political speech -- nothing else.
Mar '11
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
I'll be the resident contrarian, Claire.
I don't think the idea of political correctness is necessarily a modern one. I don't think it comes from the Soviets. However, I do think the tools to employ it on a large scale and have it repeated over and over again in state propaganda were largely perfected by the Nazis and the Communists.
My humble definition would be: the right opinion according to the regime.
I suspect, for example, that what we call political correctness would operate precisely the same way in Medieval England. Say, perhaps, in the presence of your local Lord. There are some things that can't be said in every regime. The content of those things differ.
Jun '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Crow's Nest: ...
I suspect, for example, that what we call political correctness would operate precisely the same way in Medieval England. Say, perhaps, in the presence of your local Lord. There are some things that can't be said in every regime. The content of those things differ.
I don't know about that. Political correctness has a doublespeak aspect to it, too. I know all about the emperor who has no clothes but this is different.
You have made me think about it differently, though. I will have to ponder.
Jun '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
You all need to read a great book by John Ellis, an emeritus professor of humanities at Cal Santa Cruz (not exactly a bastion of conservative thought), called Literature Lost. It is a brilliant evisceration of the idea of political correctness.
He makes a very interesting argument about the seed of PC: "Herein lies a deep irony. Those in the grip of the impulse are critical of the Western tradition and define themselves by their opposition to it, yet the impulse itself is so much a part of the Western tradition that the attitudes it generates can be said to be quintessentially Western." In other words, our Western traditions of free speech and of allowing people to be vocally critical of government are, ironically, the seedbed of hatred of Western traditions.
He makes a case that Rousseau, with his hatred of civilization and his love for the mythical "Noble Savage," and the German Romanticists love for the "Volk" are recent examples of the impulse at work, and how it can go wrong (French Revolution and Hitler).
His whole argument is both thoughtful and convincing. His whole book is the best I've ever read on the debasement of the Humanities.
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
I thought the term came out of German Marxism, maybe as recently as the Frankfurt School. Although we tend to hear it as one semantic unit, it's actually the adverb that's the point—it is what is correct as defined by politics (that is, whatever flavor of Marxism—which I'd tend to call political religion—is au courant) as opposed to other sources of authority—i.e., science, religion, countervailing political theories, and your lyin’ eyes. That's if I'm remembering right.
Apr '11
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Crow's Nest: I'll be the resident contrarian, Claire.
I don't think the idea of political correctness is necessarily a modern one. I don't think it comes from the Soviets. However, I do think the tools to employ it on a large scale and have it repeated over and over again in state propaganda were largely perfected by the Nazis and the Communists.
My humble definition would be: the right opinion according to the regime.
I suspect, for example, that what we call political correctness would operate precisely the same way in Medieval England. Say, perhaps, in the presence of your local Lord. There are some things that can't be said in every regime. The content of those things differ. · Jun 13 at 8:53am
Yes, but political correctness is much more dangerous when it is the de facto norm in a society that claims to have free speech as a bedrock priniciple. You knew what not to say to the Lord of the Manor or the Party boss at your own peril. The fact that there are no hard rules today makes PC a devious and dangerous evil.
Sep '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Political correctness is a romantic mindset derived from postmodernist scholarship especially as inculcated at ivy league schools since the 1980s. It denies objective truth and asserts that human history is nothing but a series of events in which the powerful victimize the powerless, thereby exalting the "Other" (read postcolonial or non-Western nations) in its purported goal of achieving social justice. The lens of political correctness filters out the individual in favor of social identities pitting so-called oppressors against those who are asserted to be outside the realm of power. It denies the notion of free will. It adjudicates based on the past, not the present. ... It is pervasive in American culture because the media and government are top heavy with progressive or PC-minded ivy league grads. ... It is an unexamined faith bordering on religion and, therefore, is extremely dangerous because it demands that the individual be subsumed by the collective (never mind that the collective does not truly exist) and puts group interests ahead of human endeavor.
May '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Much as I admire HP Lovecraft, I believe Shibboleth comes from the Bible book of Judges Ch12 , and not HPL.
I think you meant shoggoth, as in Shoggoth on the Roof - If I were a Deep One...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFzdIaBnckg
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Shoggoth_on_the_Roof)
I would say back to plateau of Leng Kennedy, but I really Mi Go.
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
Perhaps it started out as deep as the comments on this thread reveal, but hasn't Political Correctness become nothing more now than an attempt to define politeness when describing others?
Isn't the sinister attempt to control thought through language, be it Marxist or Fascist in origin, not really a concern today? What true examples are there of it today?
Isn't it also true that political correctness is so open to subjective decisions on what is or is not "correct" that the inherent subjectiveness will itself ensure that there will never be an established orthodoxy of what is or is not politically correct?"
Apr '11
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
<<However you define it, basically, it came from the Soviet Union>>
In that case, you need to get the definitions of "political" and "correct" right, not to mention those of "up", "down", "right", "left", and "in my lady's chamber". Politics is not the process by which society establishes good government, as Aristotle said, but the process by which the Party achieves its will (i.e., seizes power) in government and in society. "Correct" means following the Party line.
The evil of a regime of political correctness is the end of human and intellectual integrity, as following the Party line replaces previous standards of behavior, such as following the research in science, or Constitutional principles in government, such as equality before the law.
I first came across the term in one of the post-War novels of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. The staff of a left-wing publishing house are in a dilemma, having been given a Polish officer's memoirs that are very good but cast the USSR in a very bad light. Finally, one of the meanest, most fervid staffers unilaterally burns the manuscript, declaring it politically incorrect.
Sep '10
Re: This Morning's Panel: Political Correctness
It is censorship.It matters not who the censors might be in a free society. "Free Speech" is the opposite of Political Correctness.