Everything is politically correct now. You're PC, I'm PC, if the pundit on Fox doesn't like it it's PC. Meaningless term. This term gets thrown at everything. Jesus Christ, there's no consistency at all. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it can be vaguely associated with progressives. It doesn't matter if it's official censorship, not censoring things conservatives don't like, or even just people saying that they don't like something, it gets slapped with that label nonetheless. All I'm saying is that people could stand to criticize in a way that actually has some form of meaning. As it is, calling something politically correct is like the chorus to a love song on the radio: Seemingly meaningful if you aren't paying attention while being nothing more than a pile of hackneyed nonsense.
PC is what progressives and lefties have created, but since the creation of the term "PC", PC has backfired on liberals. Now that it has backfired and PC can be labeled with a term, the left does not want to be associated with it. My prediction is that PC will become forbidden hate speech, and liberals will become a protected class. We won't be able to hurl ugly accusations at "liberals" as a group, since they will be in a protected class like race and religions other than Christianity. The term PC may become forbidden hate speech, but PC itself ain't going nowhere.
Political correctness is a label that conservatives like to throw around both to justify their persecution complex, and to rationalize when they are being boorish, ignorant, racist or just plain rude. Ben Carson can talk about hating political correctness, when what he means is that he hates it because people will criticize him for making baseless generalizations about Islam that appeal to his audience. Even more so for Trump, where being rude, ignorant and boorish is his entire campaign. We are supposed to think political correctness is bad. But when he bellows and intimidates, what's good. Common courtesy and respectful debate have been under continuous assault ever since Newt Gingrich was in Congress and Rush Limbaugh discovered network rigth wing talk radio.
It is possible that all this is just your perception of the situation, when in fact it is not accurate. Liberals and Conservatives perceive things very differently, so PC may mean something different to you than to somebody else. PC describes language, policies, or measures which are intended not to offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society, but when taken too far, they can actually create situations that are offensive. PC can lead to a genuinely non racist person to be portrayed as a racist, businesses being unable to fire genuinely bad workers who aren't white, and lawsuits because somebody does not want to bake a cake that he objects to. I assure you that PC has offended many, and that it is a product of the left. The left may have had good intentions when they initiated the PC movement, but the shortcomings are what made the PC label derogatory. I would have more respect for liberals if they would do the right thing and own this term.
Yawn. Like I've never heard this non-response before. Can you give an example of the term "politically correct" being used inappropriately?
Hugh... the American people, who will elect Trump in 2016, might just disagree with you. There is a reckoning coming the the Left, and it cannot come too soon, nor be too harsh. -
I'm not talking about the term being used inappropriately. I'm saying that the term itself is incoherent. I'm saying that it does not represent a fully formed or consistent idea.
In my usage, "politically correct" refers to an idea or opinion that conforms to the ideology of any one of a number or left wing political movements. When one challenges a "politically correct" idea with a different opinion or discordant facts, the challenger is subject to verbal abuse, ostracized, or has his position or job threatened. "Politically correct" positions are defended with brown shirt tactics rather than reason or argumentation. A text book example of "political correctness" was the forced resignation of Lawrence Summers merely because he espoused a "politically incorrect" position with regard to women in the sciences, a position well supported by facts.
