"Political Correctness" I

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

One of the mindsets that has grown up with...or rather, degenerated with...today's "conservatism" is hatred of "political correctness."  By that term, the opponents of "p.c." mean the social viewpoint and responses that we're all supposed to subscribe to, and operate by.

That its opponents choose to cal it "political correctness" says a great deal about where they're coming from.  Instruments of social control...which is what they mean by their use of that term...can certainly be political:  especially if they are embodied in law, and subject to political debate.  

In that sense, the civil-rights laws of the 1960s making it illegal to deny a job, or refuse to rent to, or deny restaurant-service to, black people were quintessentially "p.c."  They may indeed be where the idea of "political correctness," and opposition to it, originated.  Civil Rights law is most certainly an instrument of social control.

Following the Civil Rights era, many Americans were doubtless over-sensitive that their words and actions not offend other people, especially "minority" people.  Not just black people: native people, handicapped people, oriental people, mentally-ill people...the list is endless.  Of course "endless:" if society is broken down into its constituent parts (a favorite ploy of politicians), we are each some kind of "minority."

That was the jumping-off point for many hate-groups, like the "White Power" movement.  Their claim was that if black people deserved "special" treatment because of their race, so did white people.  It's a typical operative "principle" of such movements to claim they stand up for the "rights" of some (in their eyes) unjustly-downtrodden "minority."  Telling people their "rights" are being denied them is a guaranteed way to generate anger: and anger always produces hatred: and, when you make enough people hate, you can gather a hate-group.

Though not all poltical movements or parties are hate-groups, the "White Power" people illustrate another "principle" by which politics operates.  Politics is not an endeavor in which deep and honest thought is required, or rewarded.  So it's always easy to create a "movement" or "party" among the thoughtless, simply by reversing, or opposing, or denying some accepted verity in society.

That's largely the origin of today's Reaganite "conservatives," whose (notably-shallow) demi-god told them that "government is the PROBLEM" ...in reversal of, opposition to, and denial of the American operative verity that "the people" are the government; and the operative Biblical verity that government is "a minister of God" to do good for people (Romans 13:1-4).

The "anti-p.c." idea undoubtedly came into being that way.  At a time when Americans were especially sensitive, and some overly-sensitive, to not offending others, it was easy...indeed, inevitable...that some people would react against, and reverse, and oppose, the idea that people should be sensitive toward each other.

In the lower middle-class mixed-race and -ethnicity neighborhood where I grew up, my mother taught me it was rude (and the hint was, low-class) to call neighbors "dagos" or "wops, "niggers," "spics," "kikes," or "polocks."

In practice, it was usually no big deal among friends: "ethnic" guys just took it as a friendly joke.  Guys from the Ozarks weren't offended or angry to be called "hillbilly" by friends.  But in the Civil Rights era, on TV, we saw angry southerners cursing "niggers" or assaulting "niggers" often enough to know that was an intentionally, violent and hurtful epithet: we never would have said it to a black person.

And my mother was right.  Treating people with contempt, deliberately "hurting their feelings," is simply the wrong way to treat people.  Not because my mother said so: because Jesus said so.

What has always struck me about the "anti-p.c." movement is that it ridicules the simple decency of treating people right: that it legitimizes treating other people contemptuously, because being sensitive to other people's feelings is "politically correct."  The problem is not that the "anti-p.c." movement views Jesus' teaching as "social control:" it is.  The problem is that "anti-p.c." teaches that social control is evil.

That's largely because haters of "political correctness" view it entirely as "liberal" social control.  We all know "conservatives," deep-thinkers that they are, think "liberal" means "evil," of course.  And there are historical reasons they do.

The Civil Rights movement in which "political correctness" had its origins was a "liberal" movement: those who opposed it did so on the "conservative" principle that government should not "intrude" in citizens' lives to tell them what to do.  That political "principle" of 1960s' segregationists (and of their Confederate ancestors) was the "conservative" one Ronald Reagan legitimized slightly over a decade later in his first inaugural speech, when he proclaimed that "government is the PROBLEM !"

In accord with that doctrine, Reaganism ever since has sought to "de-regulate" governmental control of society: never mind that that is the job of government, and one of God's mandates to human "authorities" in Romans 13:1-4. 

And when Reaganism also renounced the principle that American government expresses the will of "the people," what could be more intrusive social control than "problem" outsider-government telling citizens how to treat each other: with Civil Rights laws, for example, embodying societal "political correctness" ?

That's the conservatives' " nightmare, which always sends them into hysteria about losing their "rights" when evil socialist government tells citizens what to do.

But to be honest about the matter, no one is more insistently "p.c." than "conservatives" themselves; no one more fearfully vigilant that everyone in their ranks rigorously conform with whatever is the current group-think.  "Conservatives," more than anyone else I know, delight in searching out and anathematizing each other for the least deviation from the party-line.

And having bought into the deception that "conservatism" is Christian, much of the American Church today likewise practices its own rigid "political correctness," with accent of the "political."  There are spiritual truths about Christians' politics, and the politicians they follow, that no one is ever supposed to speak in Church, or to the Church

The fact, for example, that the "conservative" politics most American Christians follow is a manifestation of the sin scripture calls "rebelliousness:" the stiff-necked autonomy ("self-law") that comes from a heart-attitude that "nobody tells me what to do."  The fact that, rather than their works of "Christan conservative" politics, God looks on the heart of American Christians.

Rebelliousness was satan's own original sin.  I have a hard time believing God is pleased when He finds it in the hearts of those who claim to be His people.

(To Be Continued)