Yesterday, I wrote some comments about Extremism in Politics and how to identify when someone, including myself, has crossed the line into an extreme position. It is worthwhile recognizing that Political Correctness, its mutant offspring Affirmative Action, and extreme political positions are fundamentally related to each other. In my second post on Political Correctness, I posited three components of Political correctness:
1. Everyone is equal, therefore the only reason outcomes are ever unequal is because of flaws in the system. In a perfect system, equality of outcomes would be assured.
2. Since everyone is equal, there can be no differences between people; men and women, therefore, are not just equal, but are identical in every way. Anatomy is no longer destiny, in fact, it is irrelevant.
3. All differences in outcome, therefore, must be the result of the powerful group, the ruling class, discriminating against the weaker groups.
The first point reflects the Utopian roots of Political Correctness. Utopia may be fervently desired but anything done by man will never be perfect. Utopian ideas have justified mass slaughter in the last century on too many occasions and are currently used to justify slaughter by Islamic fascists and in its more liberal face, the denial of rights to many people today. I do not have to show that Islamic fascism is an extreme ideology, but it is instructive to note the extremism at the core of Political Correctness. It is used to deny jobs to people, to limit freedom of speech, and to, at its ultimate, impoverish and incarcerate those who do not tow the PC line. While the most egregious applications of the PC philosophy are, thankfully, rare, its mis-use can only grow, unless it is constantly and vigorously opposed.
The second point leads to a relative disregard of reality. Harvard is now going to spend $50 million to obfuscate the reality of gender differences. Howard Schwartz, in his book The Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry into the Roots of Political Correctness, makes the persuasive case that PC arose from the need of the feminists to deny that women and men generally adopted differing gender roles because of fundamental biological differences. Once the reality of gender difference is denied (which, psychoanalytically, is the core of perversion, another very long discussion for another day), then the only reason for different outcomes for women and men in the world was the third point listed. If we are all equal in ability, then the only possible reason for unequal outcomes would be discrimination by those at the top toward those who are beneath them. Granted that discrimination has been extraordinarily harmful and should have been combated, and should continue to be combated, PC uses the past and present existence of discrimination to craft an extreme argument.
The biggest problem arises from the fact that American society has made extraordinary progress against discrimination and intolerance in the last 40 years, but the proponents of Political Correct thought have been unable to recognize such progress since it would undermine their entire raison d'etre. This leads the PC theorist to invent and discover new and more subtle forms of sexism, racism, ageism, _________isms. If the society has become more tolerant and more sensitive to merit as opposed to group identity then the basic structure of PC thought is invalidated. The only answer from the left has been to more asiduously deny reality; to insist that "nothing has really changed".
PC suggests that any group that is not doing as well as some mythical standard of achievement must be the victims of oppression by the more powerful. There are several ways in which this is extreme. First of all, the focus on group identity instead of individual identify is a priori evidence of current discrimination; further, once you establish group identify as a trump card over individual identify, you are arranging to create real victims, as opposed to theoretical victims of an oppressive society. This is damaging to everyone affected. Obviously, the member of the "oppressor" identity group is directly affected, but the official "victim" is harmed as well, though less directly. The "victim" while overtly helped to get into university or college or a profession or trade, will be forever seen to be a second class citizen. The doubts engendered will affect him and corrode his self esteem. Worse, every member of the "victim" class will be suspect, even those who have the ability to compete on a level playing field.
(As an aside, the premise of an a priori victim and oppressor leads to such abominations as illogical sexual harassment laws that snare a liberal, Democratic President in their net. Please note, I am not taking any position on Bill Clinton at this point, just suggesting that the law suit that lead inevitably to his lies and impeachment proceedings were a natural outgrowth of the very laws the PC liberals supported and fought for. Once you agree that the male is the powerful, abusive aggressor and oppressor, and women are the innocent, helpless victims, any male-female interaction is potential abuse and the man, in the absence of a signed contract setting out the limits of the relationship, can be accused of harassment for much behavior that may be boorish but has been traditionally part of the complex mating dance of the human species.)
This post is growing longer than anticipated so I will stop here. Further elucidation of the links between Political Correctness, Affirmative Action, and Extremism to follow...
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