My USAFA classmate and fighter pilot, Jim Silver, deserves all the credit for this point.
When we cave into even letting progressives use the term political correctness, we lose. It is even worse when we use it ourselves. Although the term is political, it has nothing to do with correctness. We should reject the term and use a more accurate term – like Progressive censorship.
Progressivism claims to be about social reform. But what is nature of this reform? It really steals liberty and freedom from everyday Americans. It tricks us into giving those liberties and freedoms up voluntarily – so we become “better” people. The movement has been so successful at this point that an American can lose his/her livelihood just by saying the wrong thing – even if the intent was never malicious. Those who hear do not listen. They judge and execute. Progressive censorship is the cornerstone of tyranny.
So-called progressives are really what the behavioral scholar, Robert Cialdini, calls compliance practitioners. They play on our human tendencies to get the behavior they want – which is to get us to give up our liberties and freedoms. The end goal is a socialist system. As Dennis Prager rightly points out; socialism leads to spoiled brats, not better, more mature people. So, in reality, progressivism is really regressive with respect to social reform.
“Political correctness” is really an indirect assault on the First Amendment. It would be a direct assault if it used government to create laws against specific speech, but it intends to get there. Look at Canada. Regressive censorship has tricked us into imposing ill-conceived restrictions on our own speech, as well as that of our fellow Americans. It is only a matter of time before the direct assault on the First Amendment starts with speech laws.
Currently, the government does not recognize “hate speech”; however, the legal community does. There is no room for the notion of “hate speech” in a society that truly embraces the First Amendment. It is a progressive contrivance, and our lawyers and media are the purveyors of this vision. It is imperative to adjust the thinking in Law Schools toward rather than away from freedom of speech.
The most fundamental casualty in this war on words has been humor. We have become a dour society where no one can take a joke.
As with all terms under the heading, The War on Words, the progressive (really regressive) movement has been systematically destroying our system of liberty by redefining words and twisting their meanings to subvert the system of liberty and freedom upon which the United States was founded.
The founding of The New Republic in 1913 by Walter Lippman and Herbert Croly was the start of the war. We, the liberty-loving American public, need to restore the terms to their proper meanings.
Let’s put the term “politically correct” on the scrap heap of history where it belongs. Let the term that captures the truth and strikes a chord with the American people displace this dangerous term.
I encourage everyone who reads this post to start posting similar observations in the War on Words. Please leave comments here. In this war, illumination is all that is needed. Like him or hate him, Donald Trump did just that with the term, “fake news”. Because of his use of the term, the mainstream media had to give up on using it for their purposes. He beat them at their own game. The American people can do it.
Dennis,
Great article.
Those who advocate for political correctness imply only one political party in power–this is what happened with communism and fascism. F.A. Hayek also explains a similar process in his chapter, “The End of Truth” in his seminal book, The Road to Serfdom.
Cheers,
Ron