Political Correctness

Ultimate Issues hour today (11/9/10) dealt with Political Correctness, and Dennis' theory about why the phenomenon exists.

Dennis defines PC as the denial of painful truths. His springboard for this definition was a letter to the editor in response to his essay in the Jewish Journal, "Are People Basically Good?"

He discusses this letter in his response:

"Most revealingly, Mr. Beckmann writes, 'What a sad world it would be if we all believed as Dennis Prager that mankind is inherently evil.'

I did not write that man is inherently evil. I wrote that he is not basically good. And, yes, that does make the world sad. So do disease, earthquakes, death and all the unjust suffering in the world. But sad facts remain facts. A distinguishing characteristic of liberals and leftists is their aversion to acknowledging sad facts (the Soviet Union wasn’t evil; Islam has no more moral problems than Judaism or Christianity; the Palestinians don’t seek Israel’s destruction; there are no inherent differences between boys and girls, just sexist upbringing; the United Nations isn’t a moral wasteland, it’s mankind’s greatest hope; the list is almost limitless)."

Balint Vazsonyi wrote that political correctness originated under Communism, and the term was devised to distinguish "politically correct" things from "factually correct" things. The whole point of "politically correct" is that it refers to things that are *not* factually correct. A political correctness is something which we agree to claim, even though at some level we know it's not true. (Or at the very least, we fear it might not be true?)

One symptom of PC is that when someone goes against PC, the response is one of indignation, and taking offense. In short, one "strikes a nerve". When you strike a nerve in a discussion of purported truths, I think that's a sign you've wandered afoul of someone's notion of PC.

Now to the morsel that provokes my comment here. Dennis claimed that PC exists only on the left. I suppose that's a reasonable belief, particularly if Mr. Vazsonyi has correctly identified the origination of the term. Something invented on the left may be supposed to have stayed on the left. However, I suspect the notion that PC exists only on the left may itself only be politically correct. I can think of at least a few examples of things which provoke the same sort of indignation that Dennis saw in response to his piece. Nerves are just as easily struck on the right as on the left.

I could mention evolution, but I wont. (Oops, I guess I just did. "This is not the Droid you are looking for.") I actually have another example of a topic that strikes Dennis right on an exposed PC nerve: IQ.

Dennis doesn't seem to like the notion of IQ. When "The Bell Curve" came out, he expressed considerable outrage at the notion that people might actually believe in differences in IQ, and he was most especially outraged at the notion that people actually believed different races might have different average IQs.

His argument has been along the lines of: 1) There is no difference between races, so there can be no difference in average IQ between races.
2) IQ doesn't mean anything.
3) If someone claims to find a difference in average IQ, this finding is either wrong (see point 1) or meaningless (see point 2).
4) Anyone who fails to see the validity of the preceding three points is SIXHIRB.

As a result of this PC attitude, the question, "what if there are real differences" may not be asked or considered in any way. The absolute homogeniety, as opposed to equality, or different racial and ethnic groups is taken as an article of faith, because believing otherwise is just not PC.