Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Political Correctness of the Right


A favorite target of right-wing wrath is political correctness (PC), and and its supposed practitioners, who are referred to as social justice warriors (SJW).  Political correctness is a pejorative term that denotes the tendency to limit speech so as not to offend any particular group of people, such as minorities, nationalities, or disadvantaged people.  It is often embraced by young, liberal-minded people, especially college students.  In many cases, they have taken it to extremes by instituting overbearing campus speech codes and stifling free expression.  In the worst cases, people have lost their careers for saying things that fall afoul of the SJWs.  These extreme cases give conservatives some legitimate reason to heap scorn upon liberal PC and the SJWs, and I agree with them, up to a point.

However, many on the right tend to see things as black or white.  PC is viewed as a phenomenon of the strictly left-wing, atheist, anti-moral, low-intelligence freedom haters.  It stands in opposition to all that is good and moral.  It's us against conservative ideals.  I've always felt that one of the biggest reasons they have such scorn for PC is that their own (typically religiously motivated) hateful or bigoted sentiments are often held up by the SJWs as being politically incorrect.  In response, many right-wingers will take the very worst examples of PC, and claim that these views are representative of anyone who is liberal or irreligious.

But PC is not limited to the left.  Whatever name you choose to call it by, there is an orthodoxy of speech and many things that are off limits for conservative parlance.  Conservatives love to think of themselves as champions of free speech, but the reality is that they're no better than the liberal PC crowd of which they find so much reason to be critical.  Who tries to ban books?  It isn't the lefties.  Many Conservatives will insist that banning certain books in schools is the only kind of speech restriction practiced by the right, and they do it, of course, for the right reasons.  Right-wing PC is just a fantasy, they say.  You really can't call that PC, can you?  Well, not unless you understand the truth that their desire to ban books extends beyond schools.

But aside from school books, there are certain topics that are taboo for them.  Just ask the Dixie Chicks, who were boycotted for opposing the Iraq war.  Or the country music DJs who lost their jobs for defying the boycott.  And of course, there have been numerous efforts to silence "immoral" or gay-friendly material in the media.  The airing of Ellen's coming out was fiercely opposed by right-wing and religious organizations.  And what about campus speech?  In an environment controlled by the right, you don't lose your job for being insensitive to the plight of marginalized groups - you lose it for being sympathetic toward them.  The environment in such institutions is easily just as repressive, if not more so, than the worst PC found on liberal campuses.  One big difference is that liberal PC is largely self-imposed by students, while right-wing PC is imposed by institutional authorities.  Some conservatives would even use official authority to police campuses in order to assure that no self-imposed liberal speech codes are allowed.

And there is definitely a right-wing orthodoxy being pushed among the general public, too.  It is characterized in part by a sense of victimization.  Conservatives feel as it they are under attack.  They feel that their patriotic values are being undermined, and they want to "take America back".  They want to build a wall at the border.  They complain of religious persecution, and the "war on Christmas".  At the same time, they take pride in turning the tables on liberals by expressing un-PC ideas that can be demeaning or hurtful toward those who are supposedly protected from such language by liberal PC.  They are openly defiant of any concerns for protecting the environment or ecology, or for preserving natural resources, because those things are associated with liberalism.

They want to change the language we all use to bend everyone's thinking toward their ideology.  The word "fetus" has practically been eliminated from the language, and replaced by "unborn baby", for instance.  They describe centrist politicians as "socialists".  Estate taxes have become "death taxes".  Anti-union laws are known as "right to work" laws.  Global warming deniers are called "skeptics".

Right-wing political correctness is arguably more pervasive than liberal PC.  It's practitioners are every bit as much social justice warriors as the left-wing SJWs.  The biggest difference between them is that the liberal SJW is concerned for the well-being of others, while the right-wing SJW is far more concerned about his own well-being, and openly hostile toward that of others.

37 comments:

  1. One precept that I've held for a long time is that no one has the right not to be offended. If you don't want your sacred cow gored then keep it penned up. The post modern idea that all speech is political speech, where ideas are just implements of power, where curbing speech that "represses" a minority is justified, where everyone is entitled to a "safe space", I find abhorrent.

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    1. that's stupid. postmodernists are idiots. I was a Ph.D. candidate in a history of ideas program. I studied Derrida for four years I know more about that stuff than you ever will...it sux.

      we live in a society we are civilized and everyone has a right to a basic level of respect. stupidity.

      postmoderns do not say their thing i about hurting people's feelings.,

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  2. I agree. Suppression of free speech is not a liberal ideal, and I've said that before.

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  3. The word "fetus" has practically been eliminated from the language, and replaced by "unborn baby"

    I prefer the term "pre-born".

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    1. "Pre born"?
      Why not the correct medical term:
      Zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus?

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    2. Why not indeed.
      Well because the terms 'fetus', 'embryo,' are simply too ......... well, science-y, for today's crop of apologists. Words like embryo or fetus are anathema to religious belief and must be roundly theologised to 'unborn baby' or 'pre-born', because it wouldn't have the gravitas or pizzazz if 'the ground of all being' was obliged to ensoul just any old fetus or blastocyst. The words zygote, fetus etc ring too clearly of the inconsequential nature and indeed the irrelevance of theology as an explanatory narrative about the world in which we live.

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    3. bull shit. there is some truth in that. the right wing uses terms that imply it's alive it's a baby and do on to evoke sense of horror.

      here again, you are doing this because it's a chance to piss on Christianity, you don't give a rat's ass about truth, you don't a rat's ass about sorting out the issues, it's an opportunity to build hate. Atheism is the cult of hate.

      I'm a Christian and I'm pro choice. are you going to accept that here is a contradiction to your hate?or are you going to dismiss the contradiction with some rationalization?

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    4. What they're doing is assigning de facto personhood to a fetus or something that isn't a person. Even the bible didn't count them as people until they were a month old.

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    5. Yes, classic petitio principii.
      As I recall the judeo/christian/islamic scripture waffles from "quickening", usually around week 16, and first breath.

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    6. no bible verse says anything about a fetus in week 16

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    7. Jewish law is based on Exodus 21:22.
      It's modern medicine that says week 16. That's when fetal movement is usually first detected.

      http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-fetus-in-jewish-law/

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    8. Judeo/christian/islamic scripture doesn't mean the bible exclusively.

      If jewish rabbis see "quickening" in Exodus 21:22 that's good enough for me.

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  4. Why not...?

    I think you know why.

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    1. I was afraid I knew why. Now I do indeed.
      So a small clump of cells is a human being in your view?

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    2. So being a "human being" is dependent upon how many cells you possess? If my right leg is amputated, am I then less of a human being than I am now? How about if I actually take my doctor's advice and shed some of these unwanted pounds? Perhaps I should stop getting my hair cut? After all, I wouldn't want to be less of a person!

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    3. A blastocyst doesn't "possess" anything-you're begging the question.

      Was your appendix human when you had it removed?
      Did you give it a funeral?
      Argumentum ad absurdum works both ways.

      Most abortions, around 95% , are done in the first trimester when the embryo doesn't have a functioning brain or nervous system.
      All abortions are not the same and all stages of gestation are not the same. That's why proper term usage is essential. Eliding all stages into the inflammatory word "pre-born" is dishonest.

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    4. Most moral philosophers think that the personhood of the child begins when it can survive independently of the mother. Usually thought to be third trimester.

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    5. It's not a philospohical question. It's a scientific and medical question.

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  5. Did you give it a funeral?

    Apparently you are unaware that traditional Catholics do have funerals for amputated limbs. And not just Catholics, as evidenced by this tomb of Stonewall Jackson's left arm.

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    1. Bullshit.
      They do not.
      Bury limbs on consecrated ground? Yes.
      Funeral services for a limb? No.

      {"...of course, no funeral rites are performed over an amputated limb....."

      Rev. Winfrid Herbst S. D. S.
      Questions of Catholics Answered Page 704



      https://books.google.com/books?id=GpYLAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA703&lpg=PA703&dq=Catholics+do+have+funerals+for+amputated+limbs&source=bl&ots=AmqfgI5nqh&sig=gfSnUR7LKtosNPItUiNEWKk10Dw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiikeainsTMAhVHAcAKHS2CBRUQ6AEIPjAF#v=onepage&q=Catholics%20do%20have%20funerals%20for%20amputated%20limbs&f=false

      LOL
      A tombstone doesn't prove funeral rites were held.

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  6. From the NPR website:

    [General Jackson's] arm was buried in a private cemetery at Ellwood Manor, not far from the field hospital where it was amputated. Soon after, Jackson died of pneumonia, and his body was sent to his family in Lexington, Va.

    But, Young says, Jackson's arm was never reunited with the rest of his remains.

    "When Mrs. Jackson is informed that the arm was amputated and given a full Christian burial," Young says, "they will ask her if she wants it exhumed and buried with the general. She will decline, not wishing to disturb a Christian burial." (emphasis added)

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. So, you're ceding the argument on catholics burying body parts with funeral rites.
      Good.

      That some war weary fools might have indulged in such silliness means nothing. It actually reads like they were interested in placating the good Missus. Nice quote mining, though.

      And uhm , what "NPR site".
      Your link was to a single photo with no text save that on the tombstone.

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    3. What's interesting is that Jackson was baptised an Episcopalian, dabbled in occultic catholicism while is Mexico for a time when he was a soldier during the Mexican War, and finally became a presbyterian when he settled in Virginia.

      Quite a smorgasbord.


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  8. Thanks for sourcing-after the fact.

    {....."Remembering that Jackson was the rock star of 1863 — everybody knew who Stonewall was, and to have his arm just simply thrown on the scrap pile with the other arms, Rev. Lacy couldn't let that happen," Young says......}

    So you have wasted my time and yours with quote mining to prove essentially nothing.

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  9. Thanks for sourcing-after the fact.

    What!? You don't know how to text search? In 10 seconds, I entered the first sentence of the passage I quoted into google, and got the website as the first search result.

    Boy, some people, you gotta lead 'em by the hand...

    And by the way, that was not "quote mining" - it's called succinctness.

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    1. "...What!? You don't know how to text search?..."

      That was a subsequent post, moron.
      Your first post linked to the photo and nothing more.
      And silly me for not googling every word you type. How careless of me. //


      "....t's called succinctness."

      LOL
      Except it still doesn't say what you claimed it said.
      so actually it's called trolling.

      Don't bother responding. We are finished


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    2. "Planks Length out." (drops the mike)

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    3. Planck length ( not plank, moron) just ran out of plank.
      Always a legend in your mind, I'm sure.
      Enjoy your swim with the sharks, fool.

      (mic drop)

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  10. Planck length ( not plank, moron)

    My moniker refers to carpentry, not physics... moron.

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    1. LOL

      As much fun as trading insults with a carpenter sounds....
      no thanks.

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    2. Please refrain from the personal insults - both of you.

      Delete
  11. Your blog, your rules - no argument there!

    My screen name was (perhaps a bit too subtly) intended as a bridge between science and faith. The moral and spiritual universe as measured by the "plank" of Christ's carpenter shop in harmony with the physical measurements of our instruments (as represented by the Planck Length). The spelling was (and remains) 100% deliberate.

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