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.

Christians: The ACLU is not your friend

When I read this beyond-the-pale story yesterday*, which (yet again) exposes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for the anti-Christian organization that it is, I remembered a conversation I had a while back with an atheist reader of the Bubble, MaiZeke.

MaiZeke made the following claim:

The ACLU fights for the rights of Christians, Muslims, and the non-religious to practice their religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs in the case of the non-religious).

I took issue with the statement, and MaiZeke responded with links to a few cases or letters of Christians being defended by the ACLU.

I subsequently contacted family friend Alan Sears, who happens to be the head of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). The ADF and its attorneys boldly take on the ACLU every day, and are intimately familiar with the organization's history, philosophy and tactics. In addition to running ADF, Alan literally co-wrote the book on the ACLU's attacks on our nation's Judeo-Christian roots, The ACLU vs. America:

I told Alan of my exchange with MaiZeke and sent him her link. He promptly responded with the following:

The ACLU has a long history of providing token defense to Christians in carefully selected cases in order to advance its radical agenda. ACLU founder Roger Baldwin laid out this strategy in 1934 when he said, “If I aid the reactionaries {i.e. Christians and conservatives} to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties.”

The bottom line: The ACLU generally only defends Christians when it serves their greater agenda, and often the cases they take on are “easy” ones that will not set any lasting legal precedent that will benefit Christians. However, there are numerous examples where the ACLU has been on the forefront of silencing, or attempting to silence, Christians.

In 2006, Jeremy Gunn, the ACLU’s “Director of Religion and Belief,” said that military chaplains who share their faith with soldiers, “should find another career.”

In 2003, the ACLU of Iowa tried to intimidate the small Iowa town of Tipton, to stop its yearly tradition of a nativity scene on a courthouse lawn. In the letter, the ACLU “kindly” agreed to assist the city on how it could “choose a constitutionally appropriate way to celebrate the Solstice Season.”

The ACLU has waged a systematic “war on the cross”, demanding that cross memorials to fallen military veterans -- such as Mt. Soledad in San Diego and the Mojave Desert Cross -- be taken down.

The ACLU has time and time again filed lawsuits against Christians who are simply trying to live out their faith:

In New Jersey, the ACLU is backing same-sex couples in a civil rights complaint against the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of the United Methodist Church -- in order to force the ministry to open up its worship pavilion for same-sex “civil union” ceremonies in direct opposition to the association’s stated beliefs. 

In Kentucky, the ACLU took on a Baptist adoption ministry that works with the commonwealth to place children in loving two-parent homes, and backed a former ministry employee who had "come out” as a lesbian. The Baptist ministry's offense? Requiring its employees to adhere to Baptist beliefs regarding human sexuality. In its lawsuit, which has been unsuccessful thus far, the ACLU has tried to force the adoption ministry to either compromise its core beliefs or lose the funding it has received from the government to assist with adoptions.

It was the ACLU, in a friend-of-the-court Supreme Court brief filed in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) that came up with the distortion that the words “separation of church and state” appear in the U.S. Constitution. (They don’t.) Associate Justice Hugo Black picked up that phrase in the minority opinion, and the ACLU was off and running ever since, to use what the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit has called a “non-Constitutional construct” to engage in a war of fear, intimidation, and disinformation meant to bully public officials into silencing any religious expression in the public square – and in particular Christian religious expression. As a result, the ACLU participated in case after case at the United States Supreme Court that eventually outlawed school prayer, moments of silence, and eventually non-sectarian prayers by ministers and rabbis before public high school graduation ceremonies.

When school officials in Louisiana allowed a prayer before an awards banquet, the then-head of the ACLU of Louisiana compared praying Christians to Islamic terrorists, and demanded they be put in jail so they could be “removed from society.”

With regard to peaceful pro-life advocates at abortion clinics, the ACLU has not only attempted to strip them of the constitutionally-protected right to free speech, but some ACLU members have advocated using RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) laws – which were intended to financially cripple organized crime by tripling court awards – to bankrupt those who simply want exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The ACLU’s assaults on Christianity in the public square go on and on, and are too countless to post in a forum such as this. One thing does become clear: The ACLU is the number one religious censor in America today.

One need only go back to the news article linked in my first line to have firm evidence of that.

The ACLU is a friend of Christians? You know what they say: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Christians, don't be fooled.

*Unfortunate resolution to the story, here.

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