Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
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Wow! Some of you may have already read this, but I just stumbled across it, and it reminded me of what Michael Savage always said about THE ENEMY WITHIN....( this is a veeeerrry long read, but interesting. AND SO SCARY TRUE...
FrontPage Magazine: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of the violence that it does to peoples souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question. Can you talk about this a bit?
Theodore Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. Ones standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
I have heard people who have grown up in former Communist countries say that we in the West are at least as brainwashed by Multiculturalism and Political Correctness as they ever were with Communism, perhaps more so. Even in the heyday of the East Bloc, there were active dissident groups in these countries. The scary thing is, I sometimes believe they are right.
But how is that possible? Dont we have free speech here? And we have no Gulag?
The simple fact is that we never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have. Yes, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. This removed the military threat to the West, and the most hardcore, economic Marxism suffered a blow as a credible alternative. However, one of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist rhetoric and thinking have penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the Universities to the media. Islamic terrorism is explained as caused by poverty, oppression and marginalization, a classic, Marxist interpretation.
What happened is that while the hard Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the soft Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we deemed it to be less threatening. The hard Marxists had intercontinental nuclear missiles and openly said that they would bury us. The soft Marxists talk about tolerance and may seem less threatening, but their goal of overthrowing the evil, capitalist West remains the same. In fact, they are more dangerous precisely because they hide their true goals under different labels. Perhaps we should call it stealth Socialism instead of soft Socialism.
Another Snip from the article
Britains Anthony Browne writes in The Retreat of Reason of how the Politically Correct are more intolerant of dissent than traditional liberals or conservatives, since Liberals of earlier times accepted unorthodoxy as normal. Indeed the right to differ was a datum of classical liberalism. The Politically Correct do not give that right a high priority. It distresses their programmed minds. Those who do not conform should be ignored, silenced or vilified. There is a kind of soft totalitarianism about Political Correctness. Because the politically correct believe they are not just on the side of right, but of virtue, it follows that those they are opposed to are not just wrong, but malign. In the PC mind, the pursuit of virtue entitles them to curtail the malign views of those they disagree with. People who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with, but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned. The rise of political correctness represents an assault on both reason and liberal democracy. Browne defines Political Correctness as an ideology that classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism, and which makes believers feel that no dissent should be tolerated.:shocked: He also warns that Good intentions pave the road to hell. The world is not short of good intentions, but it is too often short of good reasoning.
The rest at the site
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/06/political-correctness-revenge-of.html
FrontPage Magazine: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of the violence that it does to peoples souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question. Can you talk about this a bit?
Theodore Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. Ones standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
I have heard people who have grown up in former Communist countries say that we in the West are at least as brainwashed by Multiculturalism and Political Correctness as they ever were with Communism, perhaps more so. Even in the heyday of the East Bloc, there were active dissident groups in these countries. The scary thing is, I sometimes believe they are right.
But how is that possible? Dont we have free speech here? And we have no Gulag?
The simple fact is that we never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have. Yes, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. This removed the military threat to the West, and the most hardcore, economic Marxism suffered a blow as a credible alternative. However, one of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist rhetoric and thinking have penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the Universities to the media. Islamic terrorism is explained as caused by poverty, oppression and marginalization, a classic, Marxist interpretation.
What happened is that while the hard Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the soft Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we deemed it to be less threatening. The hard Marxists had intercontinental nuclear missiles and openly said that they would bury us. The soft Marxists talk about tolerance and may seem less threatening, but their goal of overthrowing the evil, capitalist West remains the same. In fact, they are more dangerous precisely because they hide their true goals under different labels. Perhaps we should call it stealth Socialism instead of soft Socialism.
Another Snip from the article
Britains Anthony Browne writes in The Retreat of Reason of how the Politically Correct are more intolerant of dissent than traditional liberals or conservatives, since Liberals of earlier times accepted unorthodoxy as normal. Indeed the right to differ was a datum of classical liberalism. The Politically Correct do not give that right a high priority. It distresses their programmed minds. Those who do not conform should be ignored, silenced or vilified. There is a kind of soft totalitarianism about Political Correctness. Because the politically correct believe they are not just on the side of right, but of virtue, it follows that those they are opposed to are not just wrong, but malign. In the PC mind, the pursuit of virtue entitles them to curtail the malign views of those they disagree with. People who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with, but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned. The rise of political correctness represents an assault on both reason and liberal democracy. Browne defines Political Correctness as an ideology that classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism, and which makes believers feel that no dissent should be tolerated.:shocked: He also warns that Good intentions pave the road to hell. The world is not short of good intentions, but it is too often short of good reasoning.
The rest at the site
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/06/political-correctness-revenge-of.html
