I’ve been writing this blog for a few years now. Before that I wrote a fair amount on Yahoo groups, various email lists, letters to fishwrap editors, etc. The 1st Am. has had its use-it-or-lose-it hooks into me since college. If we don’t write it, it won’t get written, and the country will be poorer for it. I figure it’s a duty of American citizenship. I’m sure the paper trail I’ve left will come back to haunt me in my dotage. Like the previous blog item — which haunted me for a while before posting, I expect I’ll take some heat just as I took heat over posting the Coffman comment.
But when it comes to these matters, what other reasonable choice is there? Should I be my own censor and suppress facts that I know are potentially material to sound public policy? Should I interrupt a reality feedback loop that could help advance a more sound leader or a more sound policy?
The goal of political correctness is to get people to shut down their own inquiries and conclusions so that no judgments can issue from them about those who would take power. Political correctness turns sensitivity into a passive aggressive weapon that frees those who impose it from having to persuade other people on the merits.
Political correctness is an excuse, a justification, a grant of legitimacy without proof. It is no basis for sound evolution of policy or leadership. People who practice political correctness are only fooling themselves.
Look, I don’t like having to make the hard call where the forces of political correctness stand ready to pounce. I’m sure there will be a price to pay for my candor because my detractors are a most industrious group of people who won’t pass up an opportunity to attack someone who regularly hoists them on their own petards. Having a mythology that grants them endless fodder, and with their only requirement that something sound real, they can uncouple from objective reality at will to say literally anything they want, which they do quite often until they bump up against someone who calls them on it, at which point they usually jump in a new direction.
People who don’t grant themselves license to treat reality like soft clay have their hands full with the politically correct movers. It’s a game of wizzards and muggles. The muggles have no magic wands to wave or incantations to pronounce. All they can do is try to make sense of things in a blizzard of magic.
B_Imperial