Since the grisly events in Norway, there has been some debate about political correctness.

Here is an article by a leading Australian journalist, Janet Albrechtsen. I don't agree with all her comments, especially on climate change, but her discussion of the totschweigtaktik, ignoring people whose opinions you dislike, addresses a key problem in contemporary political discussion. There are more than 100 comments that you can read at the link from the headline.


Mad march of political correctness

Janet Albrechtsen From: The Australian August 03, 2011

MARK Twain knew a thing or two about political correctness when he said: "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."

It's tempting to think of the PC crowd as just a bunch of busybodies who are having us on. Early episodes of Sesame Street carry adults-only warnings. Enid Blyton has been cleared of all golliwogs. And last year a Seattle school renamed Easter eggs "spring spheres" so as not to offend children by alluding to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Political correctness seems to march to an imbecilic beat.

But of course, we know the PC crowd is not having us on. These are smart people who really mean it. Smart because the PC virus has infected so much of what we do, what we read, how we live and how we think. It's the thinking part that should trouble us the most. By telling us what to think, political correctness is a heresy if we are truly committed to liberalism. And it seeps into so many parts of society, so often without us even paying attention to the aim.

Over the past few weeks, some on the Left have claimed that those of us who have raised questions about multiculturalism, immigration and the relationship between Islam and modernity have blood on our hands for the mass murder in Oslo. Here, murder is used as a muzzle to close down free speech. And this is just the latest addition to a growing list of tactics to curb free speech,

and even worse, to stifle genuine inquiry.

Consider the other tricks in recent years. To close down discussion about, say, immigration or border control, you call your opponents racists and point to xenophobia in the community. Opponents are not just wrong, they're evil. Their views should not be aired in a civilised society.

But remember this: the stifling political correctness that rejected an open debate about immigration in the early 1990s helped fuel the emergence and popularity of Pauline Hanson.

Another ruse is the victim game. We now live in an age when "feelings" are treated as a measurement of moral values. We live in what author Monica Ali calls "the marketplace of outrage" where groups vie for victimhood status, each claiming their feelings have been hurt more than others.

We have witnessed a familiar opera of Muslim oppression used to shut down debate. It starts with a book called Satanic Verses. Or a silly Danish cartoon. Or a film called Submission. Or a cheeky episode of South Park sending up the fact that Mohammed is the only guy free from ridicule. Then we hear that great aria of all accusations: Islamophobia.

The final act sees the West capitulate, muttering about hurt feelings and preferring the path of least resistance to launching a staunch defence of freedom of expression. And we are left with a new norm of anticipatory surrender and self-censorship.

The victim game works so well because it is augmented by the apparatus of the state. Legal prosecutions are mounting: politician Geert Wilders in Holland, writers Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada. And in Australia, Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt is defending a claim by a group of Aborigines that he "offended, insulted and humiliated" them in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The PC crowd is clever. They know there are no useful legal tests about hurt feelings and inciting hate. They enact nice-sounding laws, build bureaucracies and wait for them to blossom and bludgeon free speech. They have effectively co-opted Islamic-style oppression to prohibit debate; be it about Islam or anything else they wish to fence off from free speech.

The other trick is to quietly exclude certain people from the national discourse. It is best summed up by a German word: totschweigtaktik. To be totsched is to be subjected to death by silence: books, ideas, people that challenge the status quo are simply ignored.

In Quadrant last year, Shelley Gare wrote that those who are totsched find "their efforts left to expire soundlessly like a butterfly in a jar". When Orwell wrote his 1938 classic Homage to Catalonia, which addressed Stalinist Russia's involvement in the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing literati simply ignored it. By the time Orwell died in 1950, barely 1500 copies had been sold. As Gare traces, the same death by silence was used to ignore Australian writers such as Chris Kenny, who challenged the secret women's business behind the Hindmarsh Island affair. It was used when author Kate Jennings aimed her fire at the sisterhood, postmodernism and women's studies.

It's used by those who tell us that climate change will destroy us all if we do not act immediately. The sceptics are being totsched. Opposing views? What opposing views? Governments have their own tactics. Those with poor ideas and even worse policies resort to something best described as the bipartisanship racket. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd called for bipartisanship on indigenous policies. In fact, Rudd sought supine obedience to the rollback of the NT intervention. If you disagreed, you were charged with politicising an issue. Just imagine if similar calls from those defending the status quo had managed to shut out the ideas from people such as Noel Pearson. The very last thing we want is bipartisanship when it is used so blatantly to stifle dissent and vest moral authority in one voice.

A similar trick, the consensus con, emerged from Canberra last year. Treasury boss Ken Henry, touting the emissions trading system and the ill-fated super profits tax on mining companies, said he supported the "contest of ideas" but then said there were "occasions on which economists might, at least for a period, put down their weapons and join a consensus".

It sends shudders up your spine. But Henry lost that debate. And that's the point of free debate. It is the single most effective mechanism for disposing bad ideas. Ideas are not finessed through consensus or bipartisanship. If we are serious about defending free speech, vigilance demands that we look out for the tricks and that we test the trickery against first principles. The alternative means more moral disorientation and a weird Western death wish.

The principles are clear enough: free speech is not a Left-Right thing as Mark Steyn said. It's a free-unfree thing. You don't get to cry in favour of free speech just to defend those with whom you agree. And free speech must include the right to offend. If we prosecute offensive opinions, we just encourage ever more ridiculous claims to protection. We fuel that marketplace of outrage. And we end up shutting down the true genius of modern Western civilisation: the contest of ideas.

janeta@bigpond.net.au

Oh it's so easy to cry "political correctness!"

It's one thing to claim that that so-and-so is a xenophobe and another to attempt to shut said person's speech down. From the quoted article, it appears to me, the author views both actions as being examples of political correctness. And that's something I find to be just stupid. But as far as I'm concerned she should be free to continue on in error for as long as she wants! And to apply the label of political correctness to the act of demonizing an opponent suggests that it is a recent development that never, or at most, rarely, occurred prior to the meteoric rise of the term. Or do I have it all wrong?

And maybe I have this wrong too. Doesn't it seem that as speech increases the amount of diverse opinions people hear are diminishing? The political echo chambers... are not examples of political correctness at work but rather they're what that crazy Canuck mentioned awhile back - The Global Village! The media is the extension of the individual. Media being worldwide one becomes drunk on his own power. And a drunk likes to hear himself talk. Even if it is only to wave his (or her) hands about while crying about oppression from the politcal correctness "crowd" that likes to paint its opponents as being something on the evil side of things.

Kevin, to assert that a statement is racist equates to saying that the statement is illegitimate and should not be made. Calling somebody a xenophobe (one who fears and hates people who are different) introduces the idea that the person is guilty of hate, directly implying, in view of legislation preventing vilification, that allegedly xenophobic comments should be illegal. We see this in debate in Australia, with a federal government Cabinet Minister, Tanya Plibersek, recently suggesting that all criticism of multiculturalism is hate speech. This is the sort of 'political correctness gone mad' that the article is analysing. Political correctness has always existed, but its content has evolved. It used to be that anyone who questioned Christianity was deemed guilty of blasphemy and heresy, and was censored, pilloried, burnt, hung, drawn and quartered, etc. These days we do not apply such drastic measures, except that censorship of unpalatable comment is alive and well. The attitude of the witch hunters continues to exercise a dominant irrational power to bully people into silence. In the comments linked to this article, some people say that politically incorrect ideas are just impolite, and that people have a right not to hear ideas they find uncomfortable. This attitude is a heart beat away from witch burning, setting emotional conservatism and ideological conformity as more important than truth.
I thought Marshal McLuhan was suggesting with his global village idea that we would see a steady increase in dialogue. You are suggesting we have global ghettos, where people who agree with each other can reinforce their own views and exercise totschweigtaktik (ignoring dissent through deathly silence) against anyone who thinks differently. So the 'echo chamber' does constitute political correctness.

A good example of the harmful results of political correctness is the refusal of universities to offend their Christian sponsors by engaging in dialogue with writers such as D.M. Murdock, with the implication that anyone who quotes her is committing career suicide.

Where I would disagree with Albrechtsen is that political correctness is found on the right just as much as on the left. Demagogues such as Glenn Beck formulate a right wing version of political correctness where liberals are howled down, just as much as liberals are aghast at being exposed to conservative opinion. We see this 'echo chamber' at work in Albrechtsen's ignorant statements about global warming, which are based on the momentum of the denialist mob rather than facts.

She voices a complaint that's familiar by now. She's right about much of this, but I think we need to notice as well how overused the words "political correctness" are and how they, too, are used to stifle discussion. Anything that the speaker wants you to think is silly liberal anxiety, he'll tag as P.C., usually without saying anything else of substance. So, saying that the name "The Washington Redskins" should be changed is shouted down as P.C., when there are valid humane reasons for believing that. The recent edition of Huckleberry Finn, in which "nigger" is changed to "slave," is another example. Branding that decision as P.C., as some have, is in essence using intimidation instead of argument.

The Washington Redskins is a good example. "Redskins" is a racist term of abuse directed at Native Americans, dating from the genocidal days of frontier expansion when the dominant attitude was 'the only good injun is a dead injun'. Keeping the name of a football team that reminds people of this unpleasant heritage of the European conquest of North America, with its suggestion that the people who owned the continent before whites arrived were subhuman, is seen as politically incorrect.

For a leading football team based in the US national capital to seemingly celebrate the triumph of continental conquest opens the question, which we also face in Australia, of whether colonial frontier pioneer history is seen as a matter of pride or shame. Conservatives take pride in pioneering forebears as exemplifying the virtues that made America great, even if they held racist attitudes that are no longer endorsed. The reference in the Declaration of Independence to merciless Indian savages, and the policies of President Jackson in the indian removal, show the rather extreme level of violence exercised by the American state against indigenous people.

It leads to the basic question of whether celebrating pioneer heritage is an act of racist hate. Put in those terms the argument seems ridiculous, but that is the logical implication of efforts to remove symbols of pioneer attitudes. It just shows how words concretize into new mythologies, such as the myth of the pioneer, as a contested source of moral identity.

This example illustrates the problem of monolithic thinking that results from simplistic politics. People tend to behave as if everything their opponents do and say is wrong. Conservative psychology sees questioning the name of a football team as an attack on the free enterprise system and individual liberty. 'Give them an inch and they will take a mile'.

Debate over climate change seems to me to illustrate this problem of polarised attitudes more than anything. Concern about climate originates among left wing ecologists who attack the role of capitalist growth in destroying the environment. This has given rise to a reaction by conservatives, who say that if climate change is seen as a central issue by pinkos, therefore it must be a fraud, because everything that commos say is suspect. Action to repair the climate is condemned as a socialist plot, instead of as an opportunity for capitalist firms to profit through sustainable industry. If concern about climate is politically correct, then people who take pride in being politically incorrect will take pride in being unconcerned about climate.

Recently I heard about a book that was just published that discusses the problems of political correctness. The book is titled Muzzled. The Author is Juan Williams, the reported who worked at both Fox News and NPR, from which he was fired about a year ago. I heard him interviewed by Diane Rehm (NPR) about his new book. He belives that concerns of being politically correct are getting in the way of very needed honest discussion. I think his basic premise is right on the mark. I look forward to getting a look at this book.

Here is Amazon's description of the book:
In Muzzled, Williams uses his very public firing as a launching pad to discuss the countless ways in which honest debate in America—from the halls of Congress and the health care town halls to the talk shows and print media—is stifled. In today’s partisan world, where media provocateurs rule the airwaves and political correctness dictates what can and cannot be said with impunity, Williams shows how the honest exchange of ideas and the search for solutions and reasonable compromise is deliberately muzzled. Only those toeing the party’s line—the screaming voices of the extremist—get airtime and dominate the discussion in politics and the media. Each side, liberal and conservative, preaches to a choir that revels in expressions of anger, ideology, conspiracies, and demonized opponents. The result is an absence of truth-telling and honest debate about the facts. Among the issues denied a full-throated discussion are racial profiling; the increased reliance on religious beliefs in debating American values and legislation; the nuances of an immigration policym gone awry; why abortion is promoted as a hot button wedge issue to incite the pary faithful and drive donations; the uneasy balance between individual freedom and our desire for security of against terrorism; and much more.

A fierce, fresh look at the critical importance of an open airing of controversial issues, Muzzled is a hard hitting critique of the topics and concerns we can’t talk about without suffering retaliation at the hands of the politically correct police. Only by bringing such hot button issues into the light of day can we hope to grapple with them, and exercise our cherished, hard-won right of free speech.

http://www.amazon.com/Muzzled-Assault-H ... 0307952010

For those who may be outside the DC sphere, Juan Williams (author most famously of the wonderful Eyes on the Prize) was fired from NPR because on his other gig with Fox news, he commented that he feels anxious when he sees a man in Muslim garb board a plane with him. And then he went on to discuss the irrationality of his reaction. That wasn't picked up of course, only the first thing he said, indicating bigotry, the NPR brass said. There was more to the situation than just this one incident, of course, with Williams' work for Fox being probably the origin of the soreness. Williams has also not been afraid to state non-p.c. views of what is ailing the black family, supporting Bill Cosby's campaign to get fathers to act like fathers.

But in any case, there is more than just the problem of political correctness to worry about, and I think Robert's post dissected the political impasse well.

In a former life, I was the publisher of a monthly rag called The Gazette based in Ashland, Oregon, a small, liberal community. One month I ran a piece called "Injun Summer" which used to get published every year in The Chicago Tribune back when I was a kid. I had fond memories of this piece, despite its somewhat "politically incorrect" subject and title. Sure enough, I did get fairly lambasted for running it. Even the Chicago Trib had stopped running it for the same reason. To me it's all about context though. Here's a great opportunity to discuss bygone attitudes if we weren't so busy taking a knee-jerk offense. This is why it's pretty damned near impossible to teach Hucklberry Finn in high school any more.

Anyway, if you want to risk it, here's the piece in all its glory.

http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Chicago/Inj ... /index.htm

Saw this guy on the Jon Stewart Show and I thought he spoke very eloquently about this issue. Here's an article he wrote for USA Today.


In America today, fear stifles honest debate

by Juan Williams

These are the new terms of debate in America: Speak your mind and you face being stigmatized, scorned and, in my case, fired. Last October, I mentioned in a TV debate that after 9/11, seeing people in Muslim garb in airports makes me nervous. I was told I was a bigot for having such thoughts, and was promptly fired from my job as an NPR news analyst.

This contagion has spread throughout our body politic. It's all over the painfully arthritic debate on raising the debt limit. Neither Republicans nor Democrats can move the debate forward. Both sides are infected by pledges and speech codes that inhibit honest debate and compromise.

Even among Republicans, the disease has been debilitating. House Speaker John Boehner, of Ohio, has been unable to move his second in command, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, to accept a deal that is overwhelmingly favorable to Republicans. It includes sharp spending cuts and entitlement reform, but the GOP is balking because Democrats ask that the deal include small tax increases on the very rich.

A future at risk
Instead of honest, reasonable debate and compromise, the nation's economic future is at risk. Rigid hard-liners insist on deficit reduction plans that have no chance of going anywhere but give the Republicans the ability to make the empty claim — using politically strategic speech code — that they have a plan and the Democrats do not. The point is not that one side needs a plan. It is that the nation needs both sides to make a deal and keep the country from the certain economic turmoil that comes with default on our debts.

Speech codes are evident among Democrats, too. They are not allowed to say that endless unemployment benefits and sweetheart benefit packages, as part of contracts agreed to by public unions and the politicians they put in office, are outright corruption.

This assault on honest debate extends into social policy. No one is supposed to talk about family breakdown and the number of out-of-wedlock births in the nation. If you do, be prepared to be charged with airing dirty laundry and wreaking psychological damage on the children of single women. Ask Bill Cosby about the attacks on him after he tried to start just such a debate. Ask President Obama what happened after he said too many black men fail as fathers. Instead of debating the topic, Jesse Jackson accused him of talking down to black people and said Obama should be castrated.

Similarly, the NRA's power makes it nearly impossible to have a national dialogue on gun violence. No one is supposed to talk about our tremendous appetite for illegal drugs. And no good Republican is supposed to say the nation needs immigration reform without being scolded by the GOP base for offering "amnesty" to illegal immigrants.

The result? Stifled discussions rooted in the fear of what might happen if we say the wrong thing on any topic of importance. This silent killer isn't allowing us to address real issues or find real solutions. Americans of all political stripes tell pollsters the current politics of polarization and paralysis frustrates them and make them fear for the future of the nation. Political language and political practice form a symbiotic circle. When one fails, they both fail.

The American body politic is ensnared in a constant election cycle that never seems to end and celebrates extreme viewpoints, attack ads, hotheads in town hall meetings and senators fleeing their state instead of using their words, their power of persuasion in debate and politics. We are now accustomed to niche websites, magazines and TV shows that present only one point of view that often demonizes any contrary viewpoint. And before anyone lays into Fox News — consider the fact that I'm there speaking freely.

What can't be said
Politically correct speech is so ingrained in our daily lives that to bluntly say immigrants need to assimilate — to learn English, to be patriotic, to abide by U.S. standards of law — is now to risk attack by one civil rights group or another for being insensitive to people who want to celebrate their roots.

Religious organizations make it nearly impossible to talk about the fact that mature, married women make a personal decision to have abortions.

The Obama administration refuses to use the term "terrorists" for fear of offending Muslims who sympathize with the political goals of the terrorists who use violence against civilians. Agreeing with political goals is OK. But the Obama administration crosses the line into speech codes when officials fail to call terrorism a crime against civilization. Terrorism is wrong, and the administration should have no hesitation in calling it terrorism.

For all the free speech that has flowed forth in this country and the world courtesy of 1776, let us not forget that it was a willingness to speak honestly in debate and take the risk of compromise that produced the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Free and honest "public debate" is lost as every side presents absolute pledges to the most extreme elements in its base and refuses to engage in compromise. It is up to the American people to fight back against speech codes and political correctness and reclaim our right to honest intellectual exchange — real debate.

Juan Williams, a Fox News analyst, is the author of the new book Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/fo ... dges_n.htm

Juan Williams really said it, didn't he? This is off the main topic, but I saw Juan Williams speak at the National Book Festival (a great event if you get the chance) in DC several years ago. My wife is a big fan of the "Eyes on the Prize" TV series and book, so I bought his latest book and he inscribed and autographed it for me. The book was titled This Far by Faith, and as you might guess it is all about the role of faith in the lives of African Americans from early on through the civil rights movement. I think about that sometimes when religion is berated, or when I do that myself. There wasn't a whole lot else keeping that culture together.

No, it does not! It is a speculative statement. In the eyes of the speaker, perhaps, a statement of fact. You are taking the extreme condition and applying it to the entire audience. I think the effort to stifle speech comes as much from the "victims" of political correctness as it does from those who are regarded as being members of the PC "crowd."
No, it does not! I can believe, after reading this post, that in your view any accusation of racism, xenophopbia, (and more speculatively) sexism or ageism means that the speaker is demanding these voices to be silenced. (Have I just misstated your view of the matter?) Have you seriously considered that it can be simply a case of calling a spade a spade! And this would be the near exact working opposite of political correctness, wouldn't it?
Therefore, every time anyone accuses someone of, say, racism it is the equivalent of trying to ban that person from a further airing of his views. What I believe is that you, along with the author of the article, have your own form of political correctness going on. I believe that every racist should have his say! It doesn't mean however, necessarily, that I'm not going to say so-and-so is a racist.
I see your equating those who make accusations of racism to the attempt of making it illegal for opposing views to be aired to be something of a case in point.
Well they do actually have a right to not hear uncomfortable views! It can be argued that this is a bad thing of course, but not, reasonably, that they shouldn't be allowed to refuse to entertain opposing viewpoints. Also, I think you're engaging in hyperbole. Is this conversation really furthered by repeated mentions of witches and burnings? I don't know... maybe so. My impression is that he thought instant global communication would in itself change the message... it would itself affect the sender... well regardless, it's my view.
Why the need for the term "political correctness?" It means we're arguing abstractions. It's one thing to argue the matter of whether it is acceptable for a university (public, private, either) to refuse to presents certain sides of a debate and another to first insist that the matter be referred to as a case of political correctness.
This is an example of what I meant by the last comment. I think we could reasonably disagree on the outlooks that should be attributed to the right and to the left. I think the argument becomes even more murky when it comes to assigning specific politicians to the right-left divide. Do you remember the thread here that asked whether or not Obama happened to be a socialist? It would take so long for me to even begin to understand the viewpoint of the originator that the original argument would have to take a backseat. Well anyway... the point is, when labels are assigned to actions it becomes more an argument over labels than content. This is The Global Village, as I see it - the power to shout and be heard to at least some limited degree. Oh I remembered something! Years ago I was arguing something and at some point I realized I was wrong. I wrote: I am wrong and you are right. He of course read it as this: I am right and you are wrong. He sent back a reply about how satisfying it was that after all this time I had been reduced to 'an infantile dsplay of flinging phlegma.' He saw what he'd been conditioned to see. It's because these conversations to not take place across a table. The medium is the message - more often than not.

Really? I thought she had something here.



EDIT: Have you read JS Mill's On Liberty? ". . . there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it might be considered."

Why?

1) Becomes sometimes they are right
2) Even if an idea is wrong it can still be helpful by way of helping society to better understand the correct view (via reasoned argument)
3) multiple sides usually have some truth
4) censorship is a drug just like cocaine

...probably there are more.

Kevin, people only accuse others of the various isms to criticize them, meaning to suggest that the person making the objectionable statement should stop doing so, and should change their thought process to agree with the critic. No one ever calls another person these labels except to make a moral judgment. But generally the politically correct critic lacks the power to prevent the other person speaking their mind, unless the comment falls within the purview of legislation against hate speech and vilification. Consider the widespread use of the phrase "I'm not racist, but ...". Very few people openly admit to the racist view that color of skin and cultural heritage predetermine social potential. Prejudice tends to be masked behind protestations of non-prejudice.

Political correctness is all about the primary value given to being inoffensive and polite. It just means that many home truths get suppressed.

The outcome of "political correctness" as seen in the British riots

66 comments on this story

OK Of course, should is a far cry from must. I'm not so sure I agree with your first assertion, actually, and quite sure I disagree with the [seeming intent of the] second. Striving to get someone to simply be honest with himself (from the perspective of the accuser) does not necessarily mean the criticism is directed against the perceived -ism. It could be a case of the accuser not being able to stand the continuing flirtation with hypocrisy the accused is wrapped up in. Here is an illustrative example: You want to continue being a xenophobe when you're with your buddies, well fine! But please, enough already with the We-Are-The-World sloganeering you engage in when you're at work! So yes, criticism is intended but directed is at something other than the -ism itself. Well isn't this what we are doing? Isn't this what a large percentage of rational disagreements have at their core? What is wrong with trying to get someone to change his views? I could give a long list of societal changes I view as being beneficial in nature that were brought about as a result of one group of people challenging the views of another group. OTOH I could give a lenghtly list of not-so-great changes as well. So yes it's true that there is an element of criticism, and a hoped for improved behavior or thought process... I don't see anything wrong with this. It's not like for a primary goal we're going to have 'being nice' or 'inoffensive' or something similarly silly!
I think it has more to do with stripping away a being's individuality actually... but regardless, there is a difference between relying on stereotypes and stating so-and-so is a sexist while giving the reasons it is the case (at which point relevant data points are presented.) But I agree with you, surprisingly enough given my objection to the intent of your posts (as I see it.) I can't recall the last time I charged anyone with an -ism of any kind. I'd rather just recount the reasons behind the -ism and leave it to the listener to decide on her own whether an -ism is in order. But of course I think anyone should have the right and ability to charge -isms at will!
It is social sanction that prevents the majority of dissent against the established viewpoint. And I don't see anything wrong with social sanction. So I don't believe I'm in agreement here... consider the things that are said in some parts of the country (or world for that matter since it's not really a global Village just yet) and the quite opposite things that are said in other areas. Consider the Bible Belt and tha there is no law against charging the US military has for its primary purpose the task of making the world safe for global capitalism. Now people here, generally, are all for capitalism, but this charge chaps their hides nonetheless! I think it's because they like to think that any dirty deed performed by the military is done so for their benefit. If we invade Iraq for oil then we should see to it that the citizens of the country directly benefit from the plunder rather than EXXON-Mobil, and so on... in a way it's a sign of enlighted self-interest. Well, the point is, we are free to attack the grandaddy of all political correctness - the moral supremacy of the military. That's all that should be demanded.
Why is it then then that global warming advocates (as is the case in the article) are so often counted amongst the PC "crowd" given that 1) they are very often not polite and 2) are commonly far from inoffensive? I don't see "PC" as being a term that has much to do with manners. I consider that charge to be a smokescreen. PC is a term used primarily in the effort to denigrate someone you disagree with without having to resort to reasoned debate. It's cheap, easy, and effective. Ask the nearest climatologist!;-D