Freedom of speech is being suppressed by political correctness

"think tank" would be the politically correct name for it. Visit my blog: http://whatisthisstrangeplace.blogspot.com/

It now seems to be 'groovy' to attack political correctness. It's just the pendulum swinging once more. Little Britain is a sustained attack on the defenceless who are protected by 'political correctness'. Both are ridiculous. We should not attack anyone who cannot defend themselves adequately and we should not surround ayone in cotton wool and allow them to act in an indiscriminately antisocial manner just because they are a particular gender or race or have a disability of some kind. We should take that into account though when we do attack them. It's not rocket science, is it?

Isn't political correctness just a type of civility? Certainly any idea can be expressed in a manner that is both factual and compassionate. I don't think that there is anything mutually exclusive about political correctness and freedom of speech. Whenever I see the term "politically correct" I immediately substitute the word "polite" in my mind. Similarly, whenever I see the word "liberal", I replace it with "generous", and I replace the word "conservative" with "thrifty". When I perform this exercise, I'm sometimes surprised by the new connotations that are revealed.

Good points above. What you're arguing against is extremism. You're right that this jeopardizes free speech and all civil rights. I don't think PC necessarily has to be extreme, or even particularly favors extremists, but like any aspect of a free society, politeness can be abused. http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/default.asp The above link talks about extremism in America. It concludes that "information is an invaluable asset in promoting a more civil and secure society." That's a bit of a platitude, and maybe that's fortunate for us.

ooh, they're talking about thins on ch4 news right now, must be a slow day. there was an interesting reaction to this on the guardian blog http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/01/03/reasons_revenge.html Language is powerful, and it is worthwhile to control it. I suspect that a lot of the overuse of political correctness (bobblehat's examples) is simply people unwilling to use their own common sense and just sticking rigorously to guidelines that tell them not to discriminate or offend minorities.

i don't really mean 'control it', 'be careful how we use it' is more what I was aiming for.

FYI, here is a link to the PDF version of "Retreat of Reason", which started this discussion. http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs47.pdf I just spent the last 30 minutes scanning this 100+ page document (rather than working on my software program, which I should be doing:-) I find Anthony Browne's viewpoint fascinating and arrogant. I believe the bottom line is that following this viewpoint will cause intolerance to increase, making society worse rather than better. There are lots of examples: If someone objects to me calling coffee with milk "white coffee" (page 40) should I be upset? I'm pleased to oblige that person. It means very little to me to change, and perhaps avoids offending in a way that I can't appreciate or understand. The reason that we cut breaks to victims (page 59) is because most people possess empathy. And for those people without empathy, there is a practical argument: any of us might unexpectedly become a victim, so it's a good thing to cultivate generosity in society. I don't believe women get paid less because of their chosen life style (page 73) I don't know about the UK, but in the USA women are victimized all the time. And if a woman receives a few more breaks than me, and even if she happens to be undeserving of these breaks (which isn't the usual case), I'm willing to tolerate that because life is sometimes slightly unfair. The world is hard and filled with viciousness. That's obvious. It appears to me that PC tries to soften that hardness to make things more livable.

Hmm...when I was a kid my dad used to say to my sister (who was 17) "If you bring one of them dirty niggers home I'll chase you both up the road and you wont come back."

We all know that homosexuals are genetic mutants. Let them have their day is what I say. We all know that nature selects according to success in survival...gays are fucked because they can't reproduce. But if they have fun dressin' up and stuff and they're happy...then let them get on with it. Bless 'em.

Oh FFS!

"...in the USA women are victimized all the time. And if a woman receives a few more breaks than me, and even if she happens to be undeserving of these breaks (which isn't the usual case), I'm willing to tolerate that because life is sometimes slightly unfair." That's very generous of you, but to institutionalize such a viewpoint is to underpin the legal system with an arbitrary premise. What principle of law says that if person A has been wronged, we should punish someone chosen at random from the telephone book? Furthermore, this notion of American women as being sytematically vicimized and presumably helpless is patronizing to women, for one thing, and utter rubbish on the facts. Women in America have more special privileges and fewer resonsibilities than any group on earth, including the British royal family. The next time someone tries to penalize me for the imaginary wrongs done to them, I will refer them to the cadre of volunteer whipping boys who have so generously agreed to accept punishment on my behalf. (Almost sounds like we're back on the Jesus thread, eh?)

Ha! Ha! Good responses, all. We've all learned something here today, I hope. (I certainly have :-)

I downloaded that report. It will take a while to read through it all, but looking at the analysis of the origin of modern political correctness, I would have to say he is definitely on the right track. This is primarily an American invention, and having lived in London for three years i can say the manifestations I noticed there were rather trivial. Of course, it would be much worse in academia, I suspect, but even so, most of the PC I encountered in the UK was from Americans, not British. Moreover, having attended an American univeristy from 1969-1973 I can verify his contention that it blossomed in the 60s and gradually infected the rest of society over the subsequent period. His analysis might well have some errors here and there, but what i read made perfect sense to me. I see PC as an extemely dangerous and toxic social disease which deserves the utter contempt and abuse it appears to be attracting at last.