Political correctness - the religion of the elite

Jon Keller gives a crack set of comments about the Lowell Spinners Political Correctness Night, where the bat boys were batpersons and the shortstops were vertically challenged players.

Keller also has a poll that highlights the killjoy nature of PC...I'm printing his poll out with my comments in red.

- Insistence on gender neutrality in all things (e.g. "selectperson" or "second-baseperson")

Where the men can now become nurses and women can now be mayors, there is no bias. When it gets ridiculous as in the above, it smacks of insecurity and avoiding reality.

- The insistence that there is no right or wrong

I graduated with a mathematics degree in 1994. Proving theorems and solving complex mathematical problems was the way I got out of writing fifteen page papers. The proof of 1+1=2 is rumored to be 800 pages long, and in abstract algebra, 1+1=2 is the result of an element in an additive ring with the operation of + acting as a collector of successive items, with 1 representing a unitary object and 2 representing the successive object.

In my current line of work, there are certain rules and regulations I must follow, and I must keep a high accuracy percentage, or else I get FIRED. That means I cannot explain my way out of my errors; I actually have to have proof that I was right before they dismiss the charge, so I'm guilty before I'm proven innocent.

'There is no right or wrong' is a cop-out when the person posing the question can't answer it either.

- Phobic antipathy toward Western civilization, its cultural works and beliefs

In other words, be really, really suspicious and jealous of stuff that was not done by the Third World, corrupt despots and bloodthirsty dictators, and things that involve science, law and other innovations...things that keep people in the Middle Ages or lesser.

- One must never do anything to damage anyone else's self-esteem (i.e. grading, tracking, testing)

Horsehockey (not to you, Jon!). Testing, grading and tracking is absolutely essential - it gauges knowledge, points out errors, and helps people to understand what is right and what is wrong. Even if you're not held to a job that expects high quality, you're still being graded, tracked and tested by your managers and supervisors to see if the hire they made (you) will be able to tackle higher assignments down the road. If you break under pressure, you may miss out on raises, and soon enough, you may be shown the door for lack of initiative.

- Feel-good environmental fads of dubious value (such as carbon footprint offsets)

Any activity that protects the elite at the expense of the non-elite is a product of guilt, guarded jealousy, and envy. The elite, in order to protect all their goodies, throw out all sorts of curve ball theories to keep the non-elite from enjoying their spoils. Environmentalism is a great example - the elite preach the gospel according to Gaia, but once the mercury-filled lights are dimmed, the elite go home in their carbon-wasting jets, drive their gas-guzzling cars, and enter their gated mansions, smugly counting their lucre behind closed doors and snickering. Any "-ism" that has been tried as a political fiat always fails and sometimes takes a human toll - sometimes at the point of a gun.

- Excessive emphasis on the "root causes" of violent criminal behavior

Analysis paralysis hasn't solved the great murders of the 20th and 21st century...but defense attorneys seem not to mind when they can bill at $300 per hour.

- Going nuclear over someone else's harmless slip of the tongue

Don Imus found out the hard way - referring to a women's basketball team as he did in passing was similar to taking down a hornet's nest with a machine gun.

On the other hand, if you're zealous in correcting people for their slips of the tongue, it would be better to keep your tongue in your mouth instead of being a pushy busybody.

- Valuing PC over the First Amendment

Free speech is not equal to saying whatever you want while the other speaker is forced to listen. Free speech is also not equal to having people accept your wacky theories or your obscenity-laden tirades.

Free speech really is saying things that people won't agree with, any may require you clarify your statement. Free speech also guarantees us saying things without fear of arrest or reprisal.

PC mutates free speech into something that is synthetic, a sort of code-word interlingua between two people who are afraid to say in public what they are free to say behind closed doors. PC euphemizes unpleasant things, incorrectly elevates dull ones, and attempts to block off all stereotypes and characterizations that people find unsettling. PC manages to take the joy out of wonderful, marvelous things and reduces them to impersonal, cold machinations, in which the joke is on the unknowing.

Behind closed doors, the freedom to be ugly and to lash out on those beneath you while in public you painstakingly choreographed the correct, inoffensive version prove you to be a phony, rather than being one of the "enlightened."

Putting people first

Another thought on Earth Day, from the Great White North.

Summary: when teachers scream at full-throat that learning multiplication tables is "dull, rote learning," then what the hell is screaming slogans about "saving the planet" and "reducing your carbon footprint?"

And I wonder why these same kids, when they reach college, are so underprepared that half of their freshman year is spent in remedial learning - you know, the lessons the idiot teacher should have prepared but was too busy watching An Inconvenient Truth for the eighteenth time.

And kudos to the first smart high school kid who says, "I think your statistics are hogwash, and you don't deserve the union-mandated salary to teach this environmental Inquisition. I'd like to learn the law of Cosines and Shakespeare, not the Gospel According to Al Gore and his Marxist buddies."