I’m Not a Mac, but I’m Certainly Not PC

Saturday, August 11, 2012 11:05 pm Daniel J. Summers

Did Bob Costas really refer to a black European Olympics medalist as an “African-American?” What kind of mindless politically correct stupidity is that?

And while we're on the subject, if an “African-American” who is actually from the United States wins a medal, how do the Olympics officials decide which African country gets to share the credit for that medal? Just wondering.

Still more ... if an African-American wins a gold medal, what national anthem do they play? Have they created some kind of medley?

One of the funniest things I remember was hearing someone referring to a person from Africa as an “African-American African.” It certainly does seem that, when exposed to global culture, the American PC-ese seems to range from misguided to offensive. The same people who cry the loudest over discrimination over ethnic origin are also the same people who make sure we can't look past ethnic origin, thereby making all people equal.

Somewhere, we seem to have swallowed whole the lie that what someone else says about us has to be true. If someone calls you ugly, are you ugly? If someone calls you mean, are you mean? If things worked like that, I'd just pay someone to call me a 6-foot, 3-inch Harrison Ford look-a-like!

Now, I'm not ignoring our country's trouble past when it comes to true equality, but I'm also not convinced that affirmative action and political correctness have gotten us any closer to that equality. To suggest that someone be color-blind is ridiculous; on the other hand, differences are not generally liabilities. This infatuation with words, though, is a trickier thing. Freedom of speech is important, as evidenced by its being enshrined as Article 1 in the Bill of Rights, yet political correctness is the complete opposite of this. If jerks are not allowed to say jerky things, how do you know who the jerks are? I'm certainly not advocating being personally offensive to another individual; there are standards of decorum, manners, and courtesy for that. (See “jerk” in the prior sentence.) Hate speech, political speech, religious speech - it's all speech, and it gives the hearer an idea of what is in the speakers' heart.

And then - if a violation of the PC speech codes occurs, we get the calls for an apology. This, too, violates the principles of free speech; how “free” is speech that is demanded? If the offended party were to simply register their offense, then if the offending party cared that they had been offensive, they could choose to offer an apology. When was the last time you heard a demanded apology that was worth the time it took to listen to it? “I'm sorry IF you got offended by what I said” - that's not an apology for saying the words, it's an apology for the offense! It's almost like we're still in grade school. “Now, say you're sorry, Timmy…”

I also worry about generations reared with this viewpoint; if we're not tough enough to withstand words that we don't like, how in the world are we going to face down real evil? I believe there is a better way to handle that. If the words bother you, determine why they bother you; are they offensive words, do they point out your shortcomings, etc. Once you determine the source of the offense, you will know if you are dealing with a “the truth hurts” scenario, a “this person is a jerk” scenario, or a “that was unfair / inaccurate” scenario. You can then ignore the speech, change your ways, or register your offense, and move on. It's a much more productive way to deal with words that tried to hurt you.

I'll wrap up with this; if you regularly hear “racist dog-whistles” coming from your opponents, your opponents likely aren't the problem.

The Ten Commandments: A “Monumental” Controversy

Thursday, August 14, 2003 8:30 pm Daniel J. Summers

As a resident of Montgomery, AL, I'm privy to the much to-do being made over the granite Ten Commandments monument that duly-elected Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court had placed in the capitol. A Federal judge has ordered it be removed, and Justice Moore is refusing. The stage is set for a pretty large showdown very soon. As you can probably tell from my links and my previous entries, I'm a pretty religious person. However, I'm going to approach this from a purely humanistic viewpoint.

The Ten Commandments were the foundation for Jewish law. These commandments are recorded today in our Holy Bible, and the first four reference God or holiness (no other gods, no graven images, God's name in vain, and keeping the Sabbath holy). The remaining six are good precepts even for those who do not subscribe to any form of religion. These are no different from other historical laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi, and other collections of laws.

Several of our founding documents reference concepts found in the religious commandments. The Constitution, Article I, Section 7, recognizes Sundays as a day apart (much like commandment 4). The Declaration of Independence, in the first paragraph, recognizes Nature's God, and in the second, recognize the Creator - both are capitalized and singular, in line with the 1st commandment. Furthermore, The Magna Carta, a body of English law upon which our Constitution was based (and, coincidentally, predates the 1611 KJV by nearly 400 years), contain references to the one and only God in the Preamble and section 1.

We have also been told as of late that we should accept all religions, including the ever-peaceful Muslims. The prevailing world view of many people is that there is good in everything - and, judging from recent rulings by various courts and the politically correct culture that has pervaded our country, this is the way the government should look at things.

Given that references to most of the overtly religious commandments are in our country's founding documents, and the fact that we are supposed to find the good in everything, I see no reason for this marker to be removed. Justice Moore's personal beliefs should not be brought into this argument. With the 1st Amendment to our Constitution (in the Bill of Rights) prohibiting government from preventing free exercise of religion, the Federal judge's ruling that it must be removed is un-Constitutional, and will be found as such if it is appealed.