PC particularly serves mediocre politicians and the bureaucrats they appoint. It is used to hold on to jobs, silencing critics and threatening anyone who questions their abilities. If the offended party can strike back with accusation of racism, discrimination, prejudice, and hatred, then PC has done its job.
The late Charlton Heston once said, “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”
The rationale of political correctness (PC) is to prevent supposed minorities from being offended (the manners) — to compel people (the tyranny) to avoid using words or behavior that may upset homosexuals, women, non-whites, the crippled, the stupid, the fat, the ugly, or any other minority group identified by those who define PC. Its primary method is the redefinition or replacement of words and behavior in order to avoid offense, to be sensitive to the feelings of minorities.
Before we can examine PC and its effect on politics, we must first understand PC’s origin and purpose.
The concept of PC was developed at the Institute for Social Research, in Frankfurt, Germany, in the early 1920s. The institute considered why communism in Russia was not spreading westward. The conclusion was that Western civilization, with its belief that the individual could develop valid ideas, was the problem. At the root of communism was the theory that all valid ideas came from the state, that the individual is nothing. The institute believed that the only way for communism to advance and spread was to help Western civilization destroy itself, or else force it to.
The institute said that by undercutting Western civilization’s foundations by weakening the rights of individuals through the change of speech and thought patterns, by spreading the idea that vocalizing beliefs was disrespectful to others and had to be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustice, Western civilization could be destroyed. The institute wanted to call its method something that sounded positive — thus “political correctness.”
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