[MD] PC Madness

[MarshaV]

Greetings Ham,

How could you place me between Arlo and Platt under the subject of PC 
Madness?  I'd rather be sitting in a dentist's chair.

Thanks for the Happy Mother's Day wish!

Marsha






At 12:29 PM 5/9/2009, you wrote:
>Willblake, Arlo, Marsha, Platt and All --
>
>
>I don't know what Joseph Campbell's musings on religion and 
>mythology have to do with political correctness, so I'm going with a 
>new thread title.
>
>No doubt you will regard my take on PC as hypocritical and 
>naive.  But if you will bear with me I'll show you why this form of 
>thought control is detrimental to value sensibility in general and 
>to a value-based
>philosophy, such as the MoQ, in particular.
>
>When USA finalist Carrie Prejean was asked about her position on 
>same sex marriage by one of the judges, she candidly replied: "We 
>live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or 
>opposite.  And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I 
>think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a 
>woman.  No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was 
>raised."  It was an honest answer to a trick question from an openly 
>gay inquisitor who had his own political agenda.  The next day that 
>judge excoriated Miss California for her response, calling her a 
>"dumb bitch", and she was forthwith disqualified for the crown.
>
>Gentlemen, that's "political correctness" gone mad.
>
>Another version of PC is the use of language to alter the public's 
>concepton of social policy, such as the label "affirmative action" 
>in place of "minority preference", or "overseas contingency 
>operation" instead of "global war on terrorism".  If you've read 
>Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" you'll recognize this kind of verbal 
>obfuscation as a propaganda device to promote "Doublethink".  Words 
>definitely change the way we think, and with an insidious choice of 
>words a politician can persuade the public that war is peace or that 
>evil is goodness.  Joseph Goebbels made effective use of Doublethink 
>in his support of Hitler's campaign for power in Nazi Germany.
>
>In "The Historical Roots of  'Political Correctness'," Raymond Raehn 
>wrote: "America is today dominated by an alien system of beliefs, 
>attitudes and values that .seeks to impose a uniformity of thought 
>and behavior on all Americans and is therefore totalitarian in 
>nature.  Its roots lie in a version of Marxism which seeks a radical 
>inversion of the traditional culture in order to create a social revolution."
>In fact, political correctness is the postmodern world's form of 
>thought control.  What it does is blind
>the public's discriminative sense of value in an attempt to justify 
>a political agenda, such as "social equality" or governmental 
>redistribution of wealth.
>
>The reason Doublethink works as a method of thought control is 
>lucidly explained in a short essay I discovered last week by the 
>author of an Australian quarterly.  Here's a seminal excerpt from that essay:
>
>"A common response to modern moral confusion is to blame the decline 
>of religion, which no doubt has weakened the hold of traditional 
>morality.  But it is a mistake to think that morality, to be valid, 
>must rest on unquestionable foundations.
>
>"Another view of morality sees it as consisting of conventions or 
>rules of conduct that have evolved to make social co-operation 
>possible.  Perhaps we cannot prove that the rule of keeping promises 
>is absolutely morally right but we know that if we break it then the 
>benefits we all receive from society are much reduced.  This 
>conservative notion of morality is relativist in that it recognises 
>that different conventions suit different societies, but it's also 
>true that most societies share some basic, necessary rules, like 
>truth telling and rights to property.
>
>"The trouble is that, for many people, good behaviour is not enough; 
>they want morality to do the job that religion used to do, by 
>teaching them how to save their souls.  Nowadays, we are encouraged 
>to judge people's moral credentials in terms of how "concerned" and 
>"caring" they are rather than whether they can be relied on to 
>fulfil their humble duties.  But professions of contempt for "mere" 
>rules and conventions, and sentimental emphasis on good intentions 
>and motives rather than actual conduct and outcomes, can mask a lot 
>of moral vanity and fecklessness.
>
>"Doublethink in public debate is a reflection of the moral 
>confusions and doubts that afflict modern Western society.  Exposing 
>it is the first step towards bringing people back into contact with 
>their own true values."
>        -- [Michael James: Intolerable Level of Doublethink, from 
> 'The Thinking Man's CDROM']
>
>For anyone interested, I'll be running the entire essay in my Values 
>Page column all next week.  Check it out at 
>www.essentialism.net/balance.htm starting Sunday, May 10.
>
>Happy Mother's Day,
>Ham
>
>
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Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
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