"Political correctness is worse than secret police"

"The common image running through these choices is that of a leader defying the United States," was the overwhelming bottom line of a 2004 Brookings Institution poll conducted in six Arab countries, blogged back then in our post "Why Americans always lose." The picture of Gulliver is a repub from that post: "I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground," Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, illustration by Milo Winter (c. 1912)

"I have pleased many American non-Al-Gores by my statements because they feel as a minority that is under the pressure of a terrifying political correctness," wrote straight-talking Czech President Václav Klaus the other day, commenting on the surge of support among human-induced-global-warming "deniers" like ourselves for his decidedly un-p.c. views, translated by Luboš Motl of The Reference Frame and then linked by Drudge Tuesday. Today Vlad Wielbut of Dog in New York City picks up the ball and runs with it. Like so many who have escaped the jackboot of tyranny, this Polish-born, naturalized American citizen knows in his gut that freedom isn't free:

The phrase 'terrifying political correctness' struck a nerve with me, because it is terrifying indeed. How it emasculates people! In all my 27 years of living in the socialist Poland I did not see people as afraid to say what’s on their minds as I am witnessing in the United States, a country that seems attached to the idea of “free speech” as no other country in the world. On the one hand, you can of course openly curse and vilify this country not only with impunity, but to the applause of many “progressive” Americans. On the other hand, stating that women may be less genetically predisposed for interest in science than men may spell the end of your career, even if you’re a president of Harvard, unless you hurry and apologize profusely. Political correctness is worse than secret police, because it gets internalized, so you always carry it with you -- the police at least leave you alone from time to time.

As always with those who know from personal suffering the insidious dynamics of a fear society -- Natan Sharansky being the first among equals -- his words are music to our ears. "It is now fashionable, especially among the left-leaning 'elites' in the United States and in Western Europe to bash America," writes Wielbut. It's a well-worn theme, taken up just yesterday in Janet Albrechtsen's excellent "Protector of the free world deserves better" [via Maggie's Farm] in The Australian on the eve of that other straight talker, Dick Cheney's visit Down Under. A couple of choice excerpts:

British author Margaret Drabble summed it up thus: "My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me like a disease. It rises in my throat like acid reflux" . . .

Anti-Americanism has less to do with US politics and policies and more to do with what Markovits calls the "perfectly respectable human need to hate the big guy". Half a century ago, Hannah Arendt commented on the same psychology of mistrust aimed at the US. It was, she said, the inevitable plight of the big, rich guy to be alternately flattered and abused, remaining unpopular no matter how generous they were.

All good stuff and well worth a read, but Vlad Wielbut, former Eastern Bloc subject that he is, gets even closer to the bone:

Most of these accusations have no basis in reality but stem from the fact that the Left cannot forgive the United States for winning the Cold War and exposing the total bankrupcy and truly evil nature of socialism. There is no more Soviet Union to make excuses for and to compare favorably to the United States, so the Left finds itself in an uncomfortable moral and intellectual vacuum, desperately grasping for things to rally around . . .

With their worldview defeated and humiliated, the Left lashes out in helpless rage, slipping into madness. I believe that some of them actually want the United States, and even the Western world, destroyed as a punishment for their humiliation.

Yes, and horrifyingly, some of our own fellow citizens of this great country -- mainly Democrats, but some shameless Republicans as well -- seem to be suffering from the same sickness, more than willing to put their own political ambitions ahead of the nation's interest. We've been sickened by the latest iteration of Pelosi, Murtha & Company's cut-and-run strategy, "slow-bleeding" the troops to death. The human persons The Victory Caucus dubs the "White-Flag Republicans" are the worst of the lot. By all means, let them know what you think of their craven cowardice.

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

Václav Klaus is my new all-time hero and questioning Al Gore's sanity should have started LONG ago. The man is totally gaga!

Unless we start disputing p.c. at the top of our lungs and constantly, nothing is ever going to happen. There are people who are chafing at its restraints in quiet fury but don't have the courage to run their mouths. Heck, I'm 64 - I don't give a rat's eardrum, I'll blab out loud about political correctness being a tool of Satan all the time!

[Sissy Willis]

You and me both, Gayle!!!

[goomp]

Vlad Wielbut has it just right. "With their worldview defeated and humiliated, the Left lashes out in helpless rage, slipping into madness. I believe that some of them actually want the United States, and even the Western world, destroyed as a punishment for their humiliation." Liberals tend to deny reality and become violent when this is pointed out.

[buddy larsen]

Great post, and comments. There's hope, so long as we keep pointing out the madness.

[Jill]

Great post Sissy.

I've always felt that about political correctness, but then I spent so much time in college studying totalitarianism, I could recognize the symptoms of the dogmatism of "correct thought" right away.

A must-read piece is "Cultural Marxism" by Linda Kimball in The American Thinker today http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/cultural_marxism.html

[bird dog]

You said it! Relevant to this, see this:
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/02/sheila_jacksonl.html

[Gayle Miller]

After reading this post I have decided to make it my business to eschew political correctness whenever possible. If people don't like it, they can just go talk to someone else because I'm going to say what I think - p.c. or not! I'm too old to engage in nuance!

[Teresa]

Since those on the left never learned how to be polite, they mistakenly think political correctness is politeness.

If you cast your mind back to when the p.c. movement started... it was in the "let it all hang out" era. When the hippies decided that the old fogies were too repressed and didn't "tell it like it is".

However, letting it all hang out or telling it like it is without any sort of filter over your words, is impolite. To get around this, they've developed this system of politically correct speech.

As long as the speaker follows the "correct" version of what is deemed "good" - they can't possibly be impolite. The person who doesn't follow the formula is considered worse than rude, they are heretics and given the equivalent of "tar and feathers".

They love p.c. because it allows them to control communication and to intimidate those who don't agree - silencing them or discrediting them. I think people who really are "polite" are finally starting to see that they need to stand up to these p.c. pronouncements.

I don't let things pass anymore. If I see someone make a stupid p.c. statement, I'll call them on it. And they hate it. For so long the polite people of the world haven't stopped them to tell them they are arrogant and rude and wrong (in many instances). It's the wrong way to handle the behavior and I'm glad to see it changing.

[Gayle Miller]

Teresa - you are so perceptive, not to mention absolutely correct.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

I'm a liberal on most issues but I loathe the anti-Americanism of political correctness. Living in a college town, I hypothesize that one reason many men follow this line is that without it, it's harder to get a date.

[knoxwhirled]

All you have to do is look at the writings of Amanda Marcotte to see how crazy things have gotten because of P.C.

You can say just about anything, however deranged and violent it sounds, and win approval--and plumb jobs--from those on the left. Make one comment about a perceived disenfranchised minority--like the "Grey's Anatomy" guy did--and you might as well have the secret police on your tail for all the grief you get.

The scariest example is really the Duke Lacrosse scandal. The dictates of P.C. were the driving force behind those men being presumed guilty and the bogus case against them being pursued. It's truly frightening.