Political correctness

Sam Leith had claimed in the Daily Telegraph :"Political correctness" is no more than a boo-word for anything the speaker considers excessive or officious in efforts to prevent personal offence, legislate against discrimination or promote equality. As such, it's a perfectly hopeless term for grown-ups to use in discussion, because nobody can agree on what it means.”

The previous post listed the reaction of the Telegraphs’s readers. To fill a sleepless night, I penned my own reply but the newspaper had by then closed the debate. I post it on my blogsite instead.


To point out the basic error of Sam Leith’s case we must remove any confusion that the three following areas which he mentions represent the domains of Political correctness, unique to it.
The prevention of personal offence and discrimination and the promotion of equality represent also some of the basic principles of natural justice. The difference between political correctness and natural justice involves the process of their application.

Traditional natural justice is a rational, pragmatic exercise. Among the elements to be considered would be an objective assessment of the actual damage caused, intention, mitigating circumstances and any effective expression of remorse. Penalties are proportionate to the transgression, soberly determined. It is based on human values.

Political correctness is an alien import from authoritarian foreign cultures. It is based upon moral absolutes and is based on abstract idealism. The judges empowered by Political correctness perform a more simplistic function, which is to classify the crime. Like the Grand Inquisitors of old they hang a label around your neck. In the middle Ages, it ended with “ic”, now it usually ends with “ist”.

On a trivial level it sees Emily expelled as a racist from Big Brother, for a remark she could explain and would have been forgiven with adequate apology in a sane society. More seriously it describes the irrational threat under which all in public service perform their duties. Here, the mere allegation of one of these absolutes requires a career-conscious superior to end a livelihood. In public administration, the need to avoid the pitfalls of political correctness sidelines the rational goals of fairness and efficiency. It is a world where petty judges multiply, attesting their Jacobin virtue in diverse disciplinary tribunals. The verdict is arbitrary but absolute

In public life these absolutes curtail a centuries given right of freedom of thought. A Wiganer, who asked why the council house that would have gone to his son’s family had been given to newly arrived asylum seekers, was threatened by the police under the absolute of racism. As the Blair government covered the issue of immigration with the same sanction, the thought police were able to silence discussion of the serious repercussions of uncontrolled mass immigration.

Since health and safety were made an absolute, all kinds of excesses and absurdities have been introduced encumbering normal, harmless, industrial and commercial practices. Similarly by elevating concerns for child protection into the stratosphere of idealism, normal activities of social life have been obstructed and ruled out. In districts of social breakdown, the provision of schooling has been terminated, to all intents and purposes, by the ruling of politically correct local authorities that the absolutes of human rights give a child the option to tell teachers to f--- off.

Political correctness was a tyranny that grew in the Blair years. Unless we have the willingness to face up to what has been done to us, we have no hope of restoring our traditional British freedoms.

Political correctness

IF LEADING CONSERVATIVES DON’T KNOW WHAT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS, WHAT HOPE IS THERE FOR US?

In Saturday’s edition of the Daily Telegraph, Sam Leith, a regular columnist, writes that people who use the term “Political correctness” are talking rubbish. He claims: “"Political correctness" is no more than a boo-word for anything the speaker considers excessive or officious in efforts to prevent personal offence, legislate against discrimination or promote equality. As such, it's a perfectly hopeless term for grown-ups to use in discussion, because nobody can agree on what it means.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/09/08/do0804.xml

In the age of the blogger, such nonsensical stuff becomes a sounding board for informed reaction in the comments that follow. Sam Leith is cocooned in the exclusive Westminster media village. In contrast, the bloggers can write out of real experience of Political correctness in their working and everyday lives. They know exactly what Political correctness is and why it is alien to the pragmatic traditions of the country. All the comments are worth reading:

The truth is that politically correct Britain has destroyed free speech. It is difficult to mention a truth that goes against it. It takes a brave man to say anything that might be construed as being -ist. To do so is to risk losing your job - and any future job. Your history follows you today and there is no escape from what people think, regardless of whatever you might have thought or meant. The words Jade Goodey spring to mind.
When I was a kid I watched I Claudius and wondered why the Roman people put up with the excesses of Tiberius and Caligula but now, with the politically correct world of today, I can understand why none of them wanted to be first over the top - because they did not know how many would follow them. PC is just another method of divide and conquer used by the liberal intelligentsia (You and your cronies) to control the masses over the short I have no problem in identifying the concept of political correctness and it is the refuge of the ignorant and downright rude. Peter Hitchens, the Daily Mail column writer, described political correctness as "good manners" but I'm afraid I take the exact opposite view. It is born of fear, suspicion and self-importance.
Posted by Hamish, Glasgow on September 8, 2007 9:52 AM

Political correctness is easy to define. It's the crypto-Marxist privileging of the allegedly oppressed minority groups. Its aim is to undermine and demonize the alleged oppressors of these minorities: heterosexuals, men, whites, Christians, et al. It involves suppression and inversion of the truth or of attempts to find the truth, and the holding of the "minorities" in question to lower standards.
Posted by Tony MacDonald on September 8, 2007 9:01 AM

For the next month or so, mentally translate any reference to "PC", in any of its forms, as an observation of Personal Cowardice.
See if that translation fits the circumstances and explains why a person follows that particular course of action. Observe that being Personally Cowardly ensures that nobody can blame the individual. Being a Personal Coward means that you cannot be held to account. Personally Cowering protects you from responsibility.
Leaders and officials who are cowards cannot benefit our community. At best they are parasitic, at worst they corrupt.
We need leaders and officials who are not frightened into Personal Cowardice by the Civil Libertines and who are prepared to work for the majority, not vociferous minorities.
Posted by John Smith on September 8, 2007 8:34 AM

The brain left in the cloakroom is that of this piece's author, Sam Leith.
He is urgently in need of a contemporary history lesson re the origins of PC and how it was spectacularly revived. You can read an excellent account on-line -- by Lind (2004). There is Anthony Browne's 2006 book.
PC is 'cultural Marxism' and is a form of fascism (as properly defined) on a scale never before seen.

Posted by steve moxon on September 8, 2007 8:20 AM

Let's get some perspective on this!
Civil/Public Servants are working in an area where they are held to ransom by the actions of the "PC Brigade". They are unable to deliver the optimal service as a result of requiring decisions to be made at a higher level out of fear that the racist/homohobic/sectarian etc." card will be played.
I'm not talking from an ivory tower on this. I manage a public office with a staff of 50 and my time is constantly taken up with individuals who are not entitled to the service we provide. Yet these same individuals will use every avenue available (including the "bleeding heart liberal NGO's"), knowing full well that by using a "rope-a-dope" tactic may just get them where they want.
The real victims in all of this are the innocent, most deserving and willing.
Posted by Brian H on September 8, 2007 7:34 AM

The defining feature of political correctness is one of attitude rather than content.
It is the notion that certain opinions are absolutely right or absolutely wrong without having to provide any justification and without giving any room to contrary arguments except by smearing them with terms such as 'reactionary', 'right-wing', 'racist', etc.
It is this po-faced arrogance that is so infuriating, as those with disproportionate and non-democratically accountable power, such as local council executives, the courts and the BBC enforce their own world view on the rest of us.
Posted by Julian Dunbar on September 8, 2007 7:15 AM

Let us call it what it is: Thought fascism. "Political correctness" - according to whose judgement and whose non-legitimate "laws"? - is thought fascism and should be fought with the same vigour Britain thought fascism in Germany. It is about control by the driven few and should be resisted.
Posted by Verity on September 8, 2007 1:14 AM
term.

Posted by Adrian H on September 8, 2007



I made a comment of my own during a sleepless early Sunday morning, but I have not checked if it got through. I am not a fan of what I write in my Mr Hyde moments.

You're a lady

A beautiful song. Peter Skellern like a lot of us Lancastrians has brass band music in the blood.

Juvenile crime

The first part of this blog on juvenile criminality showed how it had now developed a new aspect with the organisation into gangs, connected to the adult gangs of the international drugs trade. The second part of this blog maintains that this and other changes in society in recent years mean that the traditional criminal justice system with regard to children and young people is totally unsuited to the contemporary situation and an urgent review should be carried out.

The liberalisation of laws for juveniles started in the years after the Second World War. In my northern industrial town, we lived in a stable, homogeneous, law-abiding world. The burglaries and breakdowns of public order were rare enough to make them public talking points and the police response was appropriate. In this climate, it was possible for the people to be not too unsympathetic when reformers, seeing teenage delinquents as nothing more than young scoundrels, introduced new measures to protect their immature vulnerability by, for example, prohibiting the disclosure of their identity in public reports and reducing the ordeal that they suffered when thy fell foul of the law.

The complete contrast with the world of fifty years ago is seen in a random selection of newspaper reports of this week. Previously the idea of serious crime by children of 10 and under was unthinkable. Today’s newspapers report that the BBC has obtained figures from 32 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales, that children under 10 years old committed almost 3,000 crimes last year. These included incidents of criminal damage and arson, as well as sexual offences and also cases of harassment, wounding and burglary. The existing rule that a child aged nine or under cannot be charged with an offence in England and Wales is now no more than a bitter memory of lost times. Society needs new protection, especially from the marauding packs of young offenders.

This week saw the conviction of five boys whose ages had ranged from 10 to 13 when they had killed a man whom they had spat at, insulted and pelted with sticks and stones. They had arrived at the scene in a gang of twenty looking for a gang fight. Previously they had performed acts of vandalism and insulted the staff of a leisure centre. While at the old Bailey, they had run free through the building causing havoc. These contemporary young people are in no way related to the supposed “scoundrels” of half a century ago, whose lenient inheritance they exploit. These are the creatures of computer games, with brains that press buttons without conscience and eyes that see reality as superficial as a fleeting computer image, who hunt with all humanity deleted by the pack.

We need courage to recognise the horrendous world that has been created in years of Blairite escapist pretence. We need a new leadership to start to put things right.

Escalating crime

It is thanks to the Blogsite "The Last Ditch" that I came across the video below that describes the character of the murderous crack cocaine gangs of the U.S..

It is doubtful if such a frank picture could be presented in the U.K., where the left-wing media, led by the state financed BBC insist that life in Labour Britain should be presented with a rose-tinted hue to ensure the continuance of their one-party domination. In addition, as ethnicity could be involved, any public servant who drew attention to the problem would risk being referred to a disciplinary tribunal by the intervention of a colleague eager for promotion on the ladder of political correctness. Such grim realism could not in any case be considered by some leaders of the Conservative opposition who rule that politics can only deal with nice subjects that will not cause any of their refined coteries to splutter over their exquisite soups at the dinner parties of Kensington.

After listening to Steven Levitt's talk we will realise that the facts of juvenile delinquency are very threatening indeed - stuff only "nasty politicians" have the courage to broach. The devastating fact is that in dealing with these crimes we are not up against individuals but against organisations. We are used to crimes which lead to the perpetrator being tracked down and dealt with and then the criminal activity ceasing. Gang crime is hydra headed activity. once the miscreants are in jail others merely take their place. Gang crime is all pervasive and, as in Liverpool, people with information, eager for justice are, nevertheless, afraid to talk.

Gang activity is loathsome to the British democratic tradition. A person, who subsumes into a gang or any authoritarian political or religious organisation, sacrifices the individual conscience and becomes a lesser animal, capable, in the extreme, of the most hideous perversions of normal humanity. Arthur Koestler who had experienced the glories both of Nazism and Communism wrote:

"When a person identifies himself with a group his critical faculties are diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance. The individual is not a killer, the group is, and by identifying with it, the individual becomes one. This is the infernal dialect reflected in man's history."

This is a long blog and to a large extent I must be spelling out the obvious. Its aim is not to add to the misery of Blair’s downtrodden and demoralised Britain, but to define the problem and prepare the action for a new pro-British government with the courage to retrieve the situation.

I want to talk about this, to myself alone no doubt, in my next blog.