Political Correctness is my enemy

I loathe political correctness.

I think that political correctness is poison to society, and poison to human friendships and relationships.

The idea that we must speak according to the strict and punitive dictates of a political agenda so as not to "offend" others who do not want to hear a different (yes even "offensive") viewpoint? It's abhorrent to me.

The demands of political correctness (and its growing fruit, the speech code) are a bit totalitarian, are they not? To mandate, with real social and now even financial/legal penalties, that we speak according to what one group of Americans finds "comfortable" and "acceptable" is dangerous.

Promoters of political correctness will insist that PC's aim is simply civility, respect, and politeness. Nonsense. I am at the same time anti-PC and pro- civility in discourse, pro- respect for human dignity (not respect for all ideas), and pro- politeness in dealing with others.

No, political correctness is something else altogether. It's about control and coercion, not manners. It's about suspicion and conformity, and it's about forcing agendas that not everyone accepts.

I am so, so sad for the purveyors (prisoners) of political correctness. They truly believe that they are shaping, effecting, and marching toward a golden age of social justice, a utopia of equality and harmony. What they are actually doing is killing discourse, killing human relationships, and ending the free-flow of ideas among people of goodwill. PC is a strait jacket on thought and speech, which is a barrier to real human intimacy.

PC is enslavement, and we've been warned about it for many decades. Remember George Orwell's classic book, 1984, published in 1949? Do students read that anymore? This, and other classic books like it, were cautionary tales, yet it appears a whole segment of society (including a whole lot of young Americans who have never seen life any other way) didn't heed the warning.

Last night I looked up Newspeak, the mandated new language forced on the populace in Orwell's novel:

Newspeak intended not only to force the populace to conform their thoughts and ideologies towards those of The Party, but to make it impossible to even conceive of any other point of view. 

Thoughtcrime, a word used in the novel to describe the act of thinking socially unacceptable thoughts or holding opinions that are ideologically distinct from The Party’s.

Thought police, the term for the group in Nineteen Eighty-Four that monitored the populace for any signs of unorthodox thought or action.


Sounds a little too familiar, doesn't it?

I'm going to give you my rules for speech, for anyone who wants to talk to me or be my friend:

1. Be polite and respectful when in dialogue, but do not limit thoughtful discourse out of fear that an idea you have might "offend" another.

2. Black people/White people/Hispanic people/Asian people are all human beings and are allowed to comment and have opinions on any aspect of any human culture or human nature. I place no restrictions based on ethnicity or race. You all have free speech, without fear!

3. Women can comment on "men's issues", and men can comment on "women's issues." In fact, since men and women are human, you all can comment on any human issue whatsoever, without fear!

Basically, I have just given you your freedom. I have confirmed your human dignity. It is beautiful and joyful to be free, isn't it?

I will never in my life surrender my human dignity and my free conscience.

I have never felt like a victim (nope, not even as a woman in this land of the "war on women" -- I must have missed the memo), and I have never spoken the words or even implied, "You are not allowed to speak on that because you are a woman/man/Latina/African-American/Caucasian!"

I am a mother, I am middle-aged, and I have a longer perspective on what has come to pass recently in our society. Therefore, I am compelled to say this:

I am truly sad, even heartbroken, for all those who are growing up in a PC culture without knowing anything different. Not only are we less polite and more coarse as a society these days, but those slavishly committed to PC will find it a struggle to achieve interior joy. PC is a fearful, suspicious, closed-off place to be.

I wish and pray that the politically correct and perpetually offended could feel what freedom of speech and freedom in relationships -- the true and honest give-and-take of a human conversation -- feels like. Because it must take a lot of energy to stay in line with "approved" speech and thought, to constantly walk on eggshells wondering if one has a "right" to speak about or discuss an idea. And since the "rules" about exactly who can say exactly what are ever-changing and increasingly restrictive, the difficulty, division, and misery inherent in political correctness is only going to get worse.

Get out while you can! Run, I say!

Now, I imagine this post has been a "microaggression" to some, but as long as it's still legal for me to speak and write what is politically incorrect, I will continue to do so. And if I'm ever jailed for my "offenses" someday, I'll still be gloriously free in my mind, and that's no small thing.

Dear Yale victims, er, students: You have offended me

How unfortunate that I'm going from describing the pure joy of walking the US Naval Academy grounds to recounting the pathetic display seen on the Yale campus of late.

I cannot even believe what I'm hearing or seeing in these videos. And yet, I can, because this is where politically correct, "progressive" ideology leads. It's so predictable, but still surreal.

Okay, for the backstory on the Yale... thing (I cannot for the life of me think of a word to describe it), you can go here. But essentially, there's a big controversy about Halloween in liberal America (of which I was blissfully unaware, since I live in regular America), and costumes must conform to politically correct standards.

At Yale this year, that dictate took the form of an email from the "Intercultural Affairs Council", which includes many culturally sensitive "centers" and "offices" (including the Office of LGBTQ Resources and the Office of Gender and Campus Culture, which makes me wonder, why does Yale need two offices to cover sex-and-gender needs? But I digress...). This email stressed the "growing national concern on campuses everywhere" [!!!!] about "culturally unaware or insensitive choices" of Halloween costumes by "some" college students.

Apparently, a few students who still possess the actual ability to access their human reason expressed frustration about the email to Erika Christakis, associate master of Yale’s Silliman College, and she wrote a response email that was about as inoffensive and innocuous as a fluffy kitty, agreeing with the calls for "cultural sensitivity" in Halloween costumes, but also gently suggesting that it's an issue for the (presumably mature and capable) students to work out amongst themselves, and that perhaps it was not the place of university officials to tell the students what they should wear for Halloween.

And then, after this reasonable, polite, friendly, and non-threatening email came through, all hell broke loose, apparently (and this is just a guess) because the cultural elites of the left (including these privileged Ivy League kids) have lost their ever-loving minds.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad email from an obviously very bad lady (who is married to Nicholas Christakis, the very nasty, mean, and unsafe man in the videos you are about to see) is linked at the end of this paragraph. I wanted to give you fair warning so that you can be prepared and get your smelling salts, or perhaps your best friend (or your mommy) and lay down. The evil email led to the man practically emasculating himself trying to appease the distraught offendees, although the very bad man refuses ultimately to apologize for his wife's evil, hateful words, which have decimated the students' "safe space". The violent wrenching away of the students' "safe space" prompted the very Dean of Yale to come out to where the students had "chalked" (yes, chalked!) their "affirmations", and he listened lovingly "for almost two hours" to their "profound pain", watching "every tear that was shed". Yes, the offending email was that bad. Are you ready for it? Are you sure? Okay, but I warned you, it shocks the conscience!! Read the evil in its fullness, here.

I know, right? Like, <<shudder>>. Who can bear it?

And if you can't believe how offensive and monstrous was that letter, please turn now to the actual videos of the victims themselves, who were so callously trodden upon by those big, bad, mean words, and watch how the bad lady's husband was summarily castrated chastised. And yes, that is SNAPPING you hear instead of applause at some points, because apparently, in the Land of Sensitivity, snapping is less jarring and less anxiety-producing than clapping. (No, I'm not kidding, but I wish I were.)


Video #1, wherein the professor, who had already talked with the students for over an hour, defends himself against charges of racism for failing to remember one of his 500 students' names:

As we continue on our cringeworthy adventure at Yale, a seemingly intelligent student is mourning the loss of her "safe space" as others snap-snap-snap their approval, supporting one another with caresses and hugs. Many seem on the verge of despair. This very bad man is not "hearing their pain", after all:

This one is super painful to watch, since I'm guessing that this liberal professor is actually a bit freaked out by how completely unreasonable these students are, how they are unable to grasp his very basic and logical points. Oh the irony, as these kids were raised up on leftist ideology, and somehow the professors never saw this coming?   [UPDATE: Looks like this video has been removed and is no longer available. Sorry!]

Aaaaand we get to the climax, where this young woman (pray for her), loses it completely:

At this point, I think it's the Yale student-victims who have violated my safe space! My brain will never be the same.


Even The Atlantic got it right:

In “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argued that too many college students engage in “catastrophizing,” which is to say, turning common events into nightmarish trials or claiming that easily bearable events are too awful to bear. After citing examples, they concluded, “smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.” 

What Yale students did next vividly illustrates that phenomenon. 

According to The Washington Post, “several students in Silliman said they cannot bear to live in the college anymore.” These are young people who live in safe, heated buildings with two Steinway grand pianos, an indoor basketball court, a courtyard with hammocks and picnic tables, a computer lab, a dance studio, a gym, a movie theater, a film-editing lab, billiard tables, an art gallery, and four music practice rooms. But they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?

Read the rest of the brilliant piece, here.

While it may be hard to distinguish the Yale videos from an SNL skit, here is an actual parody that someone showed me just hours before I'd even heard of the Yale incidents. I think you will appreciate the similarities:

If you liked that parody (even if it did terrify you at the same time it amused you), then you will like the one that came before it:

Folks, we either have to laugh or we will cry.

My advice to those of you who are as disgusted and horrified as I am: Be courageous. Speak up. Never stop exposing nonsense, because in the end, your voice of reason will help to rescue the nonsense-makers themselves, who will almost surely spiral down to a pit of despair if they keep on the road they're going.

Pray for them all to regain their spines and their guts and their sense, and then for your own sanity, go back and read about Annapolis, or read the heroic life of a saint, and feel better.

God's got this.