Political Correctness II

Original date 4/5/07 rev6.

What really is Political Correctness?

Simply put, my definition is that PC is a miserable excuse for not calling a spade a spade. And particularly when it comes to human behavioral or performance issues. Its consequences for the quality of life in our country have been disastrous.

In order to deal with the destructive impact of PC on our American, if not Western culture, we should try to agree on a definition of it. Without a clear understanding of what this concept really means and what prompted it to become so popular in the lives of many people, we cannot expect people to drop it again. But some of us should begin by condemning its further use as the crutch it has become to hide their whining, selfish, unethical and unpatriotic conduct.

In my recollection, the root cause of this infamously bad concept goes back to the post WW II period, although the seeds of its birth may well be anchored in the years of the Great Depression. I believe it started in the 1930-ties when our valiant WW II soldiers grew up in a time when daily life was really tough for millions of Americans, there was real poverty, food was often scarce and expensive and unemployment exceedingly high.

Nevertheless, their youth was characterized by decent rules of conduct, respect for teachers, doctors, clergy and most politicians. They grew up in an economically unpromising yet disciplined environment. They learned right from wrong and had a good social sense of propriety.

When these millions of WW II soldiers came home in 1945/46 having survived years of combat, many of them were imbued with a strong desire to make sure there never would be another war. The GI bill allowed millions to go to college, with the result that after a few years, many of them qualified for jobs they could only have dreamed of aspiring to before.

The economy boomed, jobs were plentiful, many got married and started families. And they all shared the desire to see that their own children would have a much better youth than they themselves had experienced.

This noble and understandable attitude included, among other things, a more relaxed concept towards raising children. Maybe the famous Dr. Benjamin Spock had something to do with it, but having had little time to be loved and fussed about earlier when growing up, our new parents were going to make up for it with their own kids. Their new parental philosophy was high on love and permissiveness, ignoring to some extent the fact that kids are always probing the limits of it. As a result, innocent but basic rules of behavior and conduct were relaxed to the point where kids became adept at manipulating their parents and getting what they wanted almost any old time.

Whining, crying and shrieking were proven tactics. Old-fashioned punishments were discarded. No slaps on the butt, no standing in corners, no writing lines etc, etc. Eventually, prompted by changing parental notions of education, many schools followed through by relaxing their rules of conduct and later pretty much eliminated disciplining students except in egregious cases of misbehavior.

Unfortunately and starting in the 1960ties, when many of these kids started going to college, their attitudes towards life and society had become totally different from their parents notwithstanding a nasty, relatively brief, war in Korea from 1950-1953, which, by the way, did not dampen anyone’s spirit because in essence life was good and could only get better. Because parents had catered to and spoiled their kids for at least 18 years already the youngsters were used to getting their way, even if a lot of this was traditionally considered pedagogically unsound.

This tolerating, forgiving and excusing of bad behavior, of slacking off, of allowing questionable social behavior finally exploded in things like Woodstock rallies, draft dodging for Vietnam, the urges to experiment with all kinds of things from communal living to drugs, to terrorism (US Weathermen Underground etc.) to loose morality, loss of educational momentum and a lot of parental grief and all the long term misery associated with these senseless and debouching activities. It set the standard of behavior for a lot of youngsters for the next 40 years.

There was, and still is, too much self-indulgence. Bad language, sassiness and violence coupled with a responsive Hollywood apparatus producing more and more movies about rape, suicide, drugs and all kinds of other very unsociable activities became the new standard for everyday communication and learning among many young and some not so young people. We are on the downward slope of a coarsening civil environment and the bottom may not have been reached yet.

The spreading social and moral trends of this increasingly obnoxious behavior were not limited to college age students. It also started to poison marital relationships, affecting the traditional sense of commitment required for successful family life. Divorce rates soared and many children became victimized as a result. Single parent families have become common in many segments of our population, much to the detriment of the children. That in turn created increasing demands for special aid teachers in schools, who had to deal with failed parental responsibilities for which schools just are not qualified and should not be held accountable, on principle.

But there also came a point when it began to dawn on a lot of people that the painful consequences of this “life-style” of the “new” generation’s participants showed them often not having the strength of character to admit they made mistakes. Yet they mostly refused to make basic adjustments to their non-performing relationships. Instead their plight was politicized by persons of "independent" mind and spirit and before long the new mantra gained ground that no one could be or should be blamed for any of this. The right "to do your own thing", regardless of consequences to others, became the credo of the age. It was called "Women's Lib".

The basic issue here is a fundamental conflict between personal, individual aspirations to find out what one might be able to accomplish in the outside world as an individual operator and the traditional, almost hidden world of domestic bliss in marriage and family. Unfortunately, these two “modes of life” do not combine well without exceptional organizational and fundamental commitment skills on the part of the parent logically responsible for most of the nurturing needs of children. The opposite was more likely the case, leading to conflict, drama and often tragedy.

In this new age of both single and dual breadwinners pursuing careers, bigger houses and higher paying jobs, many parents, but particularly women, failed to manage work and family adequately. The result has been increasing numbers of children suffering serious behavioral and emotional consequences. Although it has been known for an age that small as well as growing children need a nurturing environment, the result was that many grew up in very competitive homes instead, where parents, if there were two, were always struggling with each other for time to spend with the family. Things were worse of course in single parent venues.

This pattern became so widespread that society has turned a blind eye to the misery this practice engendered. It conveniently forgets that it was adopted years ago for the purpose that everyone could do his or her "own thing", but now insists that it wouldn’t be nice to blame those parents although “we know it is wrong but we don’t really know how to get out of it”.

But much more than traumatizing family life was involved in this spreading web of cultural decay. Politics, media, up to a point business, sports, entertainment all became infected with mores that earlier generations would not have condoned, and for good reasons.
As an example, many people today “commit” to do things, like calling you back on the phone for instance, but forgetting or ignoring to do so. When reminded they just shrug and claim other priorities. This is basically very impolite, but today pretty much accepted as part of the more selfish way in which people deal with each other. In other words, the person or issue from whom you may derive an immediate benefit will get time, others are ignored until they are needed or can no longer be avoided.

We must realize that it is the PC culture that allows so many among us to get away with this atrocious behavior. It depreciates civilization. Courtesy on the road, gaming any system in the broad sense, cheating, whether in school, government or business is practiced with abandon and starts at an early age. And all of this as a result of the earlier tolerance of bad, selfish behavior, but now condoned under the cloak of Political Correctness.

Naturally, with increasing tolerance for poor performance, the quality of education deteriorated across the board. Today, many people cannot do basic math, they rely on pocket calculators, nor can they write longhand legibly, nor communicate succinctly. General knowledge about the world, historic, scientific, social or economic is at a dismally low level. Of course, this poor level of education makes it harder to find a job and forces businesses to do their own upgrading of yet willing young employees.

In school and college, it carries over into the low levels of interest in subjects like the hard sciences, history, economics etc. and certainly affects those who aspire to public service and politics. There are no exams required to run for office for instance. In a somewhat exaggerated sense: as long as you can talk fast, glibly and project a popular image, a lot of people are elected on those questionable merits and become members of state or federal government. But many are neither qualified functionally, nor ethically.

As a result, of course, we see a lot of bad legislation from self-serving politicians wasting and spreading billions of dollars around to make sure they get re-elected, yet who have little or no understanding of the fundamental problems with which the country is faced nor a sense of commitment to reduce costs and make the country work better.

Government has become an ever-growing jobs machine for the benefit of its participants. The public is taxed and burdened to keep the government growing while the country increasingly faces intractable conflicts that have festered for years, problems that will take strong, principled and intelligent action by legislators to correct. But then the country finds few principled and intelligent legislators to deal with them. Nobody likes losing his or her cozy government job for non-performance reasons so priority one for every incumbent politician by and large is doing what it takes to keep the job. Interestingly, about 95% manage to keep their jobs forever in this spoils system we call democratic government. On top of it all these non-performing people are almost immune to criticism. Personal pride in real accomplishments barely exists and honor is strictly among the thieves of government largesse. Ultimately I believe it's a consequence of what we now call Political Correctness.

Tragically, we now live in a social and moral environment where anything goes but where nobody, from high to low, old to young, left to right can be blamed for anything. There is a national loss of character evident in all this, particularly in politics, but also in education, entertainment and media. I am not at all saying that every single American is infected by this condition. Thank heaven there are many solid and sound families and citizens around us. But too many others operate in a manner that defies traditional American values which continues to put our whole country at risk.

When it comes to our current Middle East problem, this lack of character, a consequence of Political Correctness so prevalent today, has given us many political leaders in Congress who only know how to just quit, retreat or hide their heads in the sand. They neither have the guts to deal with, nor the understanding of, the fact that we may be involved in a fight to the death, with a totally unscrupulous, barbaric, suicidally dedicated and well financed enemy. An enemy not fighting conventionally, but in the darker recesses of our own societies, using our remaining freedoms to subvert us and if possible destroy us. A one-way declaration of war is in existence since 1996 when Osama bin Laden made it official. Why did he do that?

The fact that the Western world found the Middle East oil, developed it and then "gave" it to the respective local governments, creating a steady and ever growing flow of money into local coffers, has created no good-will towards the West. On the contrary, it has fomented and allowed to come into existence the most radical, murderous, anti-Western bunch of fanatics the world has ever seen. A hundred years ago very small numbers of these people existed and were considered weird but not dangerous. Today, a goodly portion of the proceeds of the oil wells has produced many thousands of these people, totally radicalized by their religious mentors and prepared to sacrifice themselves for the ultimate cause of destroying the Western world. THEY HATE US, period.!

While many in the West throw up their hands unwilling to accept that dogma of so much irrationality the jihadis plot, execute and destroy. It doesn't make sense, our people claim. Of course not, in OUR way of thinking. But in THEIR minds it makes perfect sense. And that is the fundamental and threatening difference between them and us. Hence the enemy’s decision to make us their supreme objective of hate and eventual elimination.

It should be clear by now that ignoring this real threat, or surrendering a battle to the enemy, will only make the next round in this conflict that much more painful and costly.
The current congressional insanity is a perfect example of the small minded, immature and shameful political conduct taking place, in view of the whole world, while we are fighting 2 wars on behalf of the whole civilized world. At the same time we are unconscionably risking the lives of many thousands of our military by shamelessly dragging them into the Washington “scape-goating” process. If this isn’t treason I don’t know what is. Blame Political Correctness for this!

“”We harvest what we sow. “” We now practice the attitude of trying not to criticize or offend anyone. But this attitude is coming back at us in a most unexpected and vicious manner. We know things are wrong but instead of standing up and admitting our failures and fixing things, which would be the traditional American way of dealing with it, we have politicized the issue because everybody does it! This way we can blame the whole country and its history for our ills. Like drunks, we wallow in self-accusations and blame ourselves for what our forebears did to the Indians, we tell every foreigner how much better his or her culture really is than the American way of life. And most foreigners have joined this chorus.

Not currently equipped with a decent understanding of our own, nor world history, too many of our people are unaware of the good and constructive things the USA has done during the past 100 years to save the world from its own self-destructive ambitions, for which effort we get scant understanding nor recognition today from many of our own people nor from a majority of foreigners who were the real causes of much of the 20th century’s problems. We should be proud but at the same time humble about these national achievements. Unfortunately, the Europeans still cannot stomach this state of affairs and go on trying to reconcile (rewrite??) their political roles with their own miserable 20th century history and are only too happy to have Uncle Sam to blame instead. And then we blame ourselves for that. Ridiculous. So much for not knowing one’s own history. Pathetic.

But now we are at a stage where we have developed our own fanatics at home, people who would love to start blowing the place up if they could get away with it. We already see this in more and more school shootings and other insane and destructive acts of violence against innocents. But also in the increasing numbers of plots that are being uncovered and squelched by our Intelligence agencies so far before they manage to do their dirty work. But the Jihadis are at it and sooner or later one or more will succeed. We harvest what we sowed.

When we stopped punishing people at an early age for bad behavior and allowed them to indulge themselves endlessly in the playing of violent video games, many did not mature properly and therefore continue to carry immature urges of destructive juvenile behavior into daily life, with disastrous and perplexing results. Surely Political Correctness, as we now call it, had something to do with it.

The USA harbors a relatively small, but fast growing, group of Muslim people, around 5-6 million, according to the World Almanac. For some time now they are being radicalized by their religious leaders in many cities. Increasingly, they are making outrageous demands for special treatments and special arrangements while demonstrating that they really have no intention to assimilate into our American political and cultural mainstream, which they now consider the source of all modern evil. We are the Great Satan after all. You might ask, why do these people come here then? Conceivably, the ones that came earlier really wanted to get away from their own barbaric environment but today have been turned into silent fifth-column groups under new leadership by late arriving radicals. That is probably why today they show so very little respect for the country where they currently live, but are forever complaining and whining about the fact that they are not being treated properly etc.

In the USA, they certainly do not demonstrate against radicals in their midst, probably because they are just plain scared to stand up and be counted in fear of reprisals by these new radicals. Fine situation we are allowing to grow here and fester in our own back-yard.!!!

Instead of pulling the plug on this growing and insulting problem there are still people among us who cater to terrorism at home and condemn the violence in Iraq.
So what do we do? Wimps that we are, we change the school menus, we provide all kinds of special options for them and on and on. WHY? Because we are already intimidated by the barbaric, brutal manners they display in the world and are afraid they might do something hideous to us right here at home. This is shameful and irresponsible behavior on the part of our spineless state and federal governments.
But it seems permissible in the world of Political Correctness.

Question? When do we draw a line in the sand and tell these radical Islamic people, who are really guests here, that we like our culture, that we will not change it for any foreign group of complainers and if they do not behave, their visas will expire, after which they will be expelled if they haven’t left already.

Of course, there would be condemnations from pseudo allies and all kinds of Middle Eastern regimes and mobs wherever, as well as from local do-gooders, but it is time to call a spade a spade! We really must stop appeasing these offending and insulting cultural barbarians and accept the consequences. WE are not making the world more dangerous to live in, THEY are !!!!

Just to have to make this point, already demonstrates the sorry state we are in, fearful of consequences of criticizing foreigners who, in our own country, are beginning to tyrannize our society with their inappropriate demands while threatening us with dire consequences if we do not immediately accept their dictates.

This is spineless surrender and of a piece with all those Members of Congress who want to cut and run from the Middle East.
Who else is going to stop these maniacs if we don’t. The Europeans? The Russians? The Saudis? Give me a break.!

But in the end do blame Political Correctness for our ills.