1 2
#91002
Zipperback
They do have a right to be offensive in their language, but other people have a right to hate them for this and not allow them on their private property.
10/11/2006 2:44:38 AM
#91014
huxley
... Human sacrifice? dogs and cats living together? mass hysteria?
10/11/2006 4:47:32 AM
#942849
Political correctness isn't *just* the attempt to avoid saying offensive things: it usually implies it's gone too far in the other direction, to the point where the truth is considered offensive and hid by comforting lies. It's the kind of thinking that leads to the idea that we have to give nonsense and pseudoscience 'equal time' to real science, and that leads to the idea that no culture can judge any of another's customs morally.
The Russian and Chinese Communism examples are authoritarianism, the exact opposite of mob rule. Witch burnings are a bit more complex -- the closest recent equivalent would be something like lynchings, in that they were ignored by the authorities though (usually) technically illegal. (Most witch burnings were disapproved of by the authorities, though there were exceptions.)
I can indeed see a loose connection with the Reign of Terror, though, in that it *was* an overexuberant dedication to the idea of equality which became corrupted into a hatred of authority. While it's a horribly overblown comparison, I can even see the connection that the anti-science/anti-authority strands of far-left thought need to be watched. (Probably they're more of a risk to science than the anti-science far-right stuff, because they're pseudoscience rather than a denial of science, and harder to spot. Anyone with a real interest in science can easily see why Creationism isn't science; some of the anti-vaccination and alt-med stuff is much easier to mistake for science.)
4/20/2009 9:23:35 AM
#942856
Swedish Pagan
Word does not mean things just because you want them to have that meaning.
Mob rule could be witch burnings, ok. But there is no political correctness about witch burnings. It's the very opposite, simple (ie uneducated) folks agitated by the church to accuse wise women of witchcraft. And there were witch trials, so some kind of authorities must have condoned the practices.
4/20/2009 9:37:20 AM
1 2