I agree that sensitivity should be maintained. A lot of people who argue against political correctness, then use that argument as a license to say whatever is on their minds -offensive or not. But, OTOH, there is nothing wrong with using the same standards to judge everyone- with some allowances of course. I don’t believe in suspending one’s judgement just to avoid hurt feelings.

PS Did you ever read “Politics and the English Language” by Orwell? (HaHaHa)

In fact, I was attempting to look more broadly at the issue precisely because eveyone agrees so much. When everyone is marching in the same direction, it becomes too easy to lose track of the direction in which they’re marching.

I argue that sensitiviy to others’ feelings is still important and should not be trampled on carelessly in the pursuit of one’s personal truth speaking. My position favors being sensitive to the feelings of religious people like you, for example.

I extend this consideration to people with other core issues. I understand why blacks are more sensitive to issues of racism and Jews to issues of anti-semitism.

The main theme of ‘political correctness has been settled. Now let’s look at some subtexts. One of those subtexts is consideration of others’ feelings and the willingness by some to paint consideration as a moral failing.

And maybe you are not one who says that it’s not OK for Christians to state opinions on whether behavior is right or wrong, but there are plenty of people who are critical of that. If the shoe doesn’t fit, then don’t wear it.

There are lots of people in the world who think this is OK. Most of them aren’t Christians and are heartily criticized by many American Christians who want to do some of the same things here. While there are most certainly large differences of degree the core belief is the same. And that belief is “My religion is so good and right that it’s OK to make a law so the government can force everyone to follow some of its tenets.”.

We teach children to be polite, i.e. ‘correct’: that it’s not polite to point out that a classmate has pimples even when this is true. We teach children to consider how our words will affect another. We do, in fact, try to enforce a sense of correctness on behavior, and it’s often the glue that holds a society together.

I agree, but on the other hand there are times when it isn’t impolite to point out that someone has pimples (a dermatologist speaking to a patient, for example). And since adults can make this distinction, we ought to be able to do it in our political speech as well. When political correctness runs amok, what is happening is that society is assuming that we’re all children who can’t think beyond the ‘rules’ of politeness, and also making the assumption that politeness is more important than freedom.

We teach children to be polite, i.e. ‘correct’: that it’s not polite to point out that a classmate has pimples even when this is true. We teach children to consider how our words will affect another. We do, in fact, try to enforce a sense of correctness on behavior, and it’s often the glue that holds a society together.

Today, ‘correctness’ has come to refer only to the cases where the concept has been extended to a degree that it impedes the ability to discuss anything honestly.

When correctness goes too far, I agree wholeheartedly that it’s a detriment to social debate and problem solving. What I regret is that this narrow focus is creating another extreme: that politeness and consideration are seen as negatives.
My point was and is that we need to be more careful as we negotiate the language road to understanding the issues at the heart of any matter.

Basically, if you don’t think certain remarks are polite, then no one is forcing you to speak that way (isn’t that the way the argument always goes against enforcing religious beliefs?) We all wish for people to behave in ways that we think are correct, but the reality is that we shouldn’t try to enforce what we see as ‘correct’ behavior on others. First of all, they may have a different viewpoint on what is correct, and second, even if they show no inclination toward trying to behave correctly it’s not our place to force them to behave differently. In a free society we have to respect the right of others even to be jerks.

The way I see it, politeness certainly is the correct way to behave and I wish for all people to behave that way, but I don’t want that at the expense of freedom. So, I have no problem with someone expressing condemnation of certain types of speech as long as the condemnation isn’t in the form of regulation of the offensive speech (as in university speech codes) or in the form of trying to censor by ostracizing the people who speak in the way that you find offensive.

And it also gets ridiculous at times when the definition of what is polite or non-offensive gets stretched to include things that are not impolite at all. That’s how I see this example about immigration: because some people who are bigoted might speak badly about immigrants doesn’t mean that someone else who is speaking the truth about a problem with immigrants not assimilating is being bigoted. It’s that broad brush that is the problem; another situation like that would be here in the US, because some bigoted people might say that a black man is articulate and express this in such a way to show surprise (as though this is a remarkable exception, because this person thinks that most black people are inarticulate), then someone else who is not bigoted can’t even compliment a black man with that adjective without being accused of a non-PC remark.

And the border between one and the other lies where, exactly? There are areas where almost anyone can agree; banning Bah bah black sheep as racist is absurd, and calling for the death of all homosexuals is clearly bigoted. However there is a VAST gray area in between. In Spain, saying that crime has gone up because of immigration will get you labeled as a racist, even though it’s actually true, but considered “insensitive”. Sarkozy called the the youths burning cars and throwing rocks at firefighters “scum”. I agree wholeheartedly, but others thought his words unnecessarily insensitive.

I can see where “political correctness” can tire you, but I’ll tell you another word that gets tiresome; racist. Unlike political correctness, calling someone a racist is a grave insult, and is supposed to scare you into silence. I think THAT label is actually doing more harm than the political correctness label. It also has the added effect of giving cover to real racism, as people are beginning to tune out when they hear “racist!” uttered.