A Republican on Why Rush Is Bad for the GOP

Many voiced defenses and attacks on Rush Limbaugh and his relationship with the GOP this week, but a predictable pattern emerged in which Republicans defended Rush and his apologizers while Democrats scoffed and ridiculed the man and the apologies. In the partisan demonizing of Rush and his attackers, few questioned the implications and consequences of Rush as the leader and face of the GOP, that is until David Frum, Bush (the second) speech writer and life-long conservative, gave his perspective today on what Rush actually brings to (or rather repulses from) the Republican party in his Newsweek article, "Why Rush Is Wrong." After guaranteeing his conservative credentials as a defense to the RINO-type attacks he foresees as the most predictable rebuttal to his statements, he moves on to his reasoning on why Rush is not the spokesperson the right needs at this moment.

It really comes down to two words: independents and women. He proclaims that Obama does a super job at attracting these groups (and conservatives) by appealing to accountability and family-values:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

Rush, on the other hand, does just the opposite. His demeanor, physical appearance, and marital history bespeak of someone antithetical not only to women and independents, but also conservative values:

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Think about it. Rush is already hurting among women (he even admitted recenlty that he should hold a conference on why he has a gender gap of 30 points in his listening audience). Women consist of the majority of this nation and an ever-increasing segment of the voting bloc. Rush's latest comments reiterating his hope that Obama fails might do well among conservatives who strongly abhor socialist policies, but a moderate public is mostly worried about their jobs and navigating this economic downturn, not ideological principles. While Frum agrees that he wants liberal policies to fail, he argues Rush missed an important distinction when making his infamous declaration that he "hopes Obama fails."

Notice that Limbaugh did not say: "I hope the administration's liberal plans fail." Or (better): "I know the administration's liberal plans will fail." Or (best): "I fear that this administration's liberal plans will fail, as liberal plans usually do." If it had been phrased that way, nobody could have used Limbaugh's words to misrepresent conservatives as clueless, indifferent or gleeful in the face of the most painful economic crisis in a generation. But then, if it had been phrased that way, nobody would have quoted his words at all—and as Limbaugh himself said, being "headlined" was the point of the exercise. If it had been phrased that way, Limbaugh's face would not now be adorning the covers of magazines. He phrased his hope in a way that drew maximum attention to himself, offered maximum benefit to the administration and did maximum harm to the party he claims to support.

Instead of repeating the same cliché lines about Reagan and the policies of the past, Frum believes the conservative movement needs to evolve to meet the demands of the present.

Of course, we can keep repeating our old lines all the same, just the way Tip O'Neill kept exhorting the American middle class to show more gratitude to the New Deal. But politicians who talk that way soon sound old, tired, and cranky. I wish somebody at the … GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library had said: "Ronald Reagan was a great leader and a great president because he addressed the problems of his time. But we have very different problems—and we need very different answers. Here are mine."

The voting trends show an increasing populace wary of the Republican party and the solutions (or lack of) they offer. In order to overcome this downward spiral, Frum argues they need to modulate (not erdicate) social conservativism. In other words, they can accomodate the po-lifers without running a president or vice-president that makes it the party platform. The gay rights movement is too strong to overcome and will only cost them the youth vote in upcoming elections. He says the GOP must adopt a more environmental approach regarding conservation even if they do not bow down to Gore and the loss of property rights. Lastly, Republicans need to practice whtat they preach when they hold power. The party lost a lot of trustworthiness during the presidency of Bush and his obedient GOP congress.

Above all, we need to take governing seriously again. Voters have long associated Democrats with corrupt urban machines, Republicans with personal integrity and fiscal responsibility. Even ultraliberal states like Massachusetts would elect Republican governors like Frank Sargent, Leverett Saltonstall, William Weld and Mitt Romney precisely to keep an austere eye on the depredations of Democratic legislators. After Iraq, Katrina and Harriet Miers, Democrats surged to a five-to-three advantage on the competence and ethics questions. And that was before we put Sarah Palin on our national ticket.

He comes away with the warning that Rush speaks of a country that no longer exists, says that change is not necessary, and believes that the same failed approaches will win in the future. Frum does not buy it. Frum argues it is time for the conservatives to find a redeeming voice in light of the harmful policies of Obama:

Decisions that will haunt American taxpayers for generations have been made with hardly a debate. The federal government will pay more of the cost for Medicaid, it will expand the SCHIP program for young children, it will borrow trillions of dollars to expand the national debt to levels unseen since WWII. To stem this onrush of disastrous improvisations, conservatives need every resource of mind and heart, every good argument, every creative alternative and every bit of compassionate sympathy for the distress that is pushing Americans in the wrong direction. Instead we are accepting the leadership of a man with an ego-driven agenda of his own, who looms largest when his causes fare worst.

Unfortunately, those that promote and defend Rush are benefiting Obama more than harming him in the public eye. This distinction will either drag the Republican party down further or will be overcome through a distancing from the pseudo-imagery of conservatism espoused by those like Limbaugh.

I'm a pretty conservative guy. On most issues, I doubt Limbaugh and I even disagree very much. But the issues on which we do disagree are maybe the most important to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party: Should conservatives be trying to provoke or persuade? To narrow our coalition or enlarge it? To enflame or govern? And finally (and above all): to profit—or to serve?

Zizek and What Obama Means to the World

I've been collecting articles and topics I want to write about for about a month now, but I have not found the time necessary to develop them into the thoughtful essays/blog posts they deserve. Instead of letting the number of these articles build up too much higher, I thought I would develop them in briefer pieces and revise them into more comprehensive versions in my own blog later.

An article that caught my attention a few months ago titled "Use Your Illusions" by Slavoj Zizek (yes, a cheap knock off of the G'nR album) in the Nov./Dec., 2008 edition of London Review of Books interestingly shows how the international left views the political landscape in the United States. It makes our left look moderate by comparison.

Zizek believes the left in America blinds themselves to the reality that the liberals and conservatives are but a few degrees apart in a vast spectrum of political possibilities (think Ralph Nader on steroids). He views the actions of the U.S. through its international influence, and he does not see our tendencies or domination and influence changing under the leadership of Obama:

The real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will make only some minor improvements, turning out to be ‘Bush with a human face’. He will pursue the same basic policies in a more attractive way and thus effectively strengthen the US hegemony, damaged by the catastrophe of the Bush years.

After a few paragraphs, Zizek seems to lose his focus, shifting between the philosopher Kant, the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall, genocide in Congo, the economic crisis, and then back to Obama. Throughout what might be deemed unconnected rambling is an undercurrent of how Western powers seem to act within a narrative that suits U.S. and its interests.

The death of a Palestinian child, not to mention an Israeli or an American, is worth thousands more column inches than the death of a nameless Congolese. Why? . . . the permanent civil war and disintegration of Congo ‘has created a “win-win” situation for all belligerents. The only loser in this huge business venture is the Congolese people.’ Beneath the façade of ethnic warfare, we thus discern the contours of global capitalism.

Despite these criticisms, Zizek does see some positive in the election of Obama. He acknowledges the historical importance of electing the nation's first black president. He also says that there is a symbolic gesture inherent in Obama's victory.

Like many, I cried when Obama was elected and when he finaly gave the oath of the presidency. Although Zizek does not mire himself in the same level of pathos as many of us who did get more caught up in the historical significance of the moment, he accepts that this event does hold political and, more importantly, historical importance.

Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more. This is why an American friend of mine, a hardened leftist with no illusions, cried when the news came of Obama’s victory. Whatever our doubts, for that moment each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.

His final remarks on the matter suggest that he understands his cynicism is a bit extensive for these times. Perhaps this moment requires a person to serve as a symbol for what the world, not just the U.S., lacks right now.

No matter what happens, it will remain a sign of hope in our otherwise dark times, a sign that the last word does not belong to realistic cynics, from the left or the right.

Liminal States

In this month's The New York Review of Books, Nobel-Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk discusses his literary inspirations and the creation of his personal library in his essay, "My Turkish Library." I am going to avoid both of these topics, though I find the commentary about his library, which is the bulk of Pamuk's piece, to be of immense interest only because I empathize with his experience in the creation of my own library. His portrayal of his mother demanding that he not buy any more books until he finished those he already had could just as easily come out of the mouth of my mother or, now, wife. But the creation of a personal library is not what I want to discuss here.

Rather, I want to focus on a quote in his article pertaining to one of my academic interests at the moment:

The vexing questions associated with "drawing from tradition" greatly occupied the writers of the generation that came before me, and my own generation, too. Because Ottoman poetry had flourished for centuries, always remaining aloof to Western influence, there was a sense of continuity, and that made it easier and more comfortable to discuss literary and philosophical questions with reference to poetry. Because the novel was a European import, novelists and writers of prose wishing to connect with our own literary tradition turned their attention to poetry.

Though Pamuk obviously left this traditional stance and wrote many novels of contemporary importance which earned him the Nobel prize in 2006, here in this quote he is saying that writers in his country, for reasons of tradition and national character, turned to poetry as the conventional means to communicate those ideas of culural importance. This quote reminds me of Pamuk's novel, My Name Is Red, which I am currently teaching in my 20th Cent. Fiction course. Without going into great plot detail, the narrative is set in late 16th century Istanbul and focuses on the differences between the Herat/Islamic style and the Frankish/Venetian (European Renaissance) style of painting. The traditional artists, who emulate the great master miniaturists of the Herat style, feel the invasion of the Frankish/Venetian style is a corruption that verges on, if not is outright, blasphemy. Just as the writers in Pamuk's childhood only wrote poetry instead of prose, the miniaturist painters in My Name Is Red only paint in the traditional Herat/Islamic style. Although many readers might stop at this thematic concern in order to explore the differences in the Islamic and European cultures, the novel actually goes beyond this point by examining the false constructs we use to categorize the world. Pamuk's actual theme is that there is no 'pure' art, whether it be Islamic or European. They are influenced by other art styles which disrupt the 'essence' of what we desire to label 'Islamic' or 'European.'

We might call these unclassifiable territories (constructs, categories, etc.) 'liminal states.' My Name Is Red is full of these liminal states. The setting, Istanbul, Tukey, is a liminal state itself. It is neither European or Asia; rather, it is a bit of both. It is European in the sense that it does belong to NATO and it is in negotiation to become a member of the EU. Istanbul historically was a westernized city, Constantinople, at times also. Though it does have European associations, it is just as much considered a Middle-Eastern country. Its populace is mostly Muslim, and everything from its architecture to its art strongly speak of an Eastern influence. It is a unique blend of Eastern and Western, a liminal country that helps Pamuk carry these themes to the reader. There are many other situations in the book that explore these liminal states. Shekure, the female protagonist, is not sure if she is widowed or married, and she is in love with her brother-in-law, Hasan, and her childhood love, Black. A murderer (the novel is loosely framed as a mystery, though it does not follow many conventions of the mystery genre--ugh, classifications and labels, the stuff of fetishism) is stuck between a transvaluation of personal pride and obediently following the footsteps of the master miniaturists and defending the morality of Islam. Other liminal state balances the reader between public and private, sleep and wake, and objectivity and subjectivity (especially since the narrative point of view is multiple first-person). There are most likely many more liminal states, but they are fairly minor compared to the examples here.

Liminal states shatter the idea of dichotomized thinking, the simplicity that shuns the gray for the ease of black and white, stifling relativism for absolutes. When we realize that we are all tainted, that contact changes the colonizer as well as the colonized, then we will understand that respecting difference is more imperative than maintaining the staus-quo. Anyone interested in the literary portrayal of these ideas should read My Name Is Red. I am reading Pamuk's, Snow, at the moment, but as of yet, I cannot comment on if it also discusses the same concepts.

Krugman's Solution

Cross-posted at Swords Crossed

In his article titled "What to Do" in this month's edition of The New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman explains how we can get out of our current economic debacle and how to prevent another from happening in the future.  First he clearly explains the path we must take to correct our situation.  It consists of two major drives:

What the world needs right now is a rescue operation. The global credit system is in a state of paralysis, and a global slump is building momentum as I write this. Reform of the weaknesses that made this crisis possible is essential, but it can wait a little while. First, we need to deal with the clear and present danger. To do this, policymakers around the world need to do two things: get credit flowing again and prop up spending.

He then discusses the struggle of trying to get the credit markets to reopen.  He explains that it is imperative to look to history for examples of how other countries were able to open the credit markets in times of crises.

The obvious solution is to put in more capital. In fact, that's a standard response in financial crises. In 1933 the Roosevelt administration used the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to recapitalize banks by buying preferred stock—stock that had priority over common stock in terms of its claims on profits. When Sweden experienced a financial crisis in the early 1990s, the government stepped in and provided the banks with additional capital equal to 4 percent of the country's GDP—the equivalent of about $600 billion for the United States today—in return for a partial ownership. When Japan moved to rescue its banks in 1998, it purchased more than $500 billion in preferred stock, the equivalent relative to GDP of around a $2 trillion capital injection in the United States. In each case, the provision of capital helped restore the ability of banks to lend, and unfroze the credit markets.

He claims the initial recovery plan, the $700 billion proposed to buy the troubled assets was fraught with error in its application.

Yet it was never clear how this was supposed to help the situation. (If the Treasury paid market value, it would do little to help the banks' capital position, while if it paid above-market value it would stand accused of throwing taxpayers' money away.)

The only concern he has about the current plan for the $700 billion is that it is too small of an amount to make a substantive difference. Instead, he believes we need to follow Japan's path and fork over 4% of our current GDP. This process must be completed in conjunction with European bailouts of the same kind and help to developing countries also. He concludes this section with the rebuttal to the anticipated accusation thrown at this type of solution by freemarket critics.

But for now the important thing is to loosen up credit by any means at hand, without getting tied up in ideological knots. Nothing could be worse than failing to do what's necessary out of fear that acting to save the financial system is somehow "socialist."

After credit gets flowing, we need spending. He proposes a Keynesian fiscal stimulus plan to jump-start the economy. He says giving tax breaks and sending rebate checks (like the stimulus package to taxpayers earlier this year) will not work because there is no guarantee that this money will be spent; instead people will likely save and sit on the money. To prevent this, he recommends a public works project to repair our infrastructure. The reasons to go this route are twofold:

. . . it has two great advantages over tax breaks. On one side, the money would actually be spent; on the other, something of value (e.g., bridges that don't fall down) would be created.

He finishes his article with preventative measures to prevent this crisis from happening again. He argues we need to stretch the regulations in place for banks to those non-bank institutions that essentially created a banking crisis. We also need to put in place safeguards for international capital flows like we did during the Asian monetary crisis of the 1990s.

We're also going to have to think hard about how to deal with financial globalization. In the aftermath of the Asian crisis of the 1990s, there were some calls for long-term restrictions on international capital flows, not just temporary controls in times of crisis. For the most part these calls were rejected in favor of a strategy of building up large foreign exchange reserves that were supposed to stave off future crises. Now it seems that this strategy didn't work. For countries like Brazil and Korea, it must seem like a nightmare: after all that they've done, they're going through the 1990s crisis all over again. Exactly what form the next response should take isn't clear, but financial globalization has definitely turned out to be even more dangerous than we realized.

He concludes the article with the hopeful tone that we have an unlimited amount of our most beneficial resource: ideas and innovation.

We will not achieve the understanding we need, however, unless we are willing to think clearly about our problems and to follow those thoughts wherever they lead. Some people say that our economic problems are structural, with no quick cure available; but I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.

He understands that these are times when we need tried and true solutions over the status-quo, action over bickering and debate, and most of all practicality and understanding over ideology.

Disturbingly Touching

America Needs Political Correctness

Originally posted at Swords Crossed. I made some modifications to fit this new context. (Due to the recent debate regarding the use of the term `happy holidays,' I thought I would write a diary about political correctness to show its rational basis in linguistics and society.) "The interdependence of thought and speech makes it clear that languages are not so much a means of expressing truth that has already been established, but are a means of discovering truth that was previously unknown. Their diversity is a diversity not of sounds and signs but of ways of looking at the world." ~ Karl Kerenyi Referential Language `Political correctness' falls into the realm of language. For this reason, it becomes difficult to discuss unless we tackle the `nature' of linguistics and how language shapes, or, at the very least, helps shape our reality. Much of our use of language is taken for granted, and we begin to think that language is referential instead of constitutive and differential. What I mean by this is that we think that we see an objective universe before us and we just attach `names,' `labels,' or `terms' to what is already objectively present in front of us. This idea started with Plato. Plato's forms present the idea of the referential view of reality. Plato argues that there are forms (think of these as ultimate or archetypal concepts of individual things) that exists independent of our mind and we just have to discover them, though they are already there. All the worldly forms are imitations of those otherworldly forms. That view of language and reality does not hold much weight. Referentialism is equivalent to `universals' in linguistics-never changing.

Differential and Constitutive Language Most linguists now accept that language is differential instead of referential. What is the difference between differential and referential? Differential treats the world like one big nameless mush of matter. What we then do with this mush is differentiate things from other things in order to create order from the flux of chaos before our eyes. Once we are able to separate one thing from another, we then can differentiate it from the surrounding matter by giving it a name. Thus, only a small number of things before our eyes actually have names and are differentiated from what surround them. This idea works at the linguistic level as well. We differentiate the sounds of `t' and `d' for example to make the two separate terms `dot' and `tot', though they are extremely closely related (but are a small example of the untouched possibilities of verbal sounds. Interesting side note: most Asians languages do not separate the sounds of `l' and `r' which causes the mispronunciation of many English words that depend on the differences in these sounds). Differential is the equivalent to relativism in linguistics-various cultures see the world differently based on their language (Whorf [see below] did extensive studies on the differences between Native American languages and English to show that we `think' and `perceive' the world differently due to language. If you are fluent in a foreign language, think about phrases or words that are untranslatable to see how cultures view the world differently based on their language). Thus language is constitutive (constructs reality) because it shapes the way we receive the world since we are dealing with ready-made concepts that are differential. Language Shapes Reality "What in the hell does differentiation have to do with `political correctness'?" you ask at this point. Everything. I'm trying to show that in many ways we have a `selective' reality, and language helps to shape it. In fact, since we (as in me writing this and you reading this) did not create many of the words we use today; our reality has been shaped for us through the language given to us. Many of these ideas about differentiation come from Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (pay attention to the section on `difference') and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states: "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds-and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language... all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated." - (Language, Thought and Reality pp. 212-214). Since we have come to the conclusion that language shapes our reality, we must now examine how language is used in society to further understand `political correctness'. Power Structures Although there are some who may disagree, I do not believe we live in a perfectly egalitarian society. Rather, I think there are power dynamics at work in our society that give preferential treatment to some members of our society compared to others. For example, I believe we live in a patriarchal society. Evidence for this argument comes from multiple sources. One source is our names. Our lineage stems from patronyms. If you've ever done genealogy, you know that tracing the mother's line is much more difficult than the father's. Women also make 70 cents to the dollar for the same work that men do. I do not wish to focus my attention on this issue other than to show that we live in a society where some groups have privileges in this country for various historical reasons. Those with privilege are young, straight, white, middle-to-upper class males. (Please do not take this as a criticism of any of these traits. For all intents and purposes, I am all of these traits also, and none of us chose to have this privilege. Some just happened to win the luck of the draw.) As you can see, these privileges are based on sex, age, race, class, and sexual orientation. (Other factors exist in the periphery such as height, weight, and ability.) As I stated previously, for various and for the most part random historical reasons, we have a `norm' in our society. People that do not fit this norm are seen as `other'. For example, when discussing events, people usually point out race only if it is not white. (A reverse example may be in order to illustrate this for us white folks who do not pay attention to such things: we only discuss `white' people if we are in the minority or the `other' in a certain context, for example basketball. We say Larry Bird was a good `white' basketball player, but for Michael Jordan we just say he is a good basketball player, because the assumption is that he is already `black'. For anything else though, we usually point out the minority race.) Another example would be Danica Patrick who is always referred to as a `female' IRL driver. I've never heard the term 'male IRL or NASCAR driver' used before to describe a driver. It was assumed ahead of time. This practice has both positive and negative attributes. On one hand, it draws attention to inclusivity of those on the margins. On the other, it maintains the categorical distinctions of norms and margins. Still this practice can be viewed as another element in PC. Political Correctness Let's review: 1) Language shapes our reality. 2) There are power dynamics at work that give privilege to some groups over others (no puppet master controlling this situation, but that's just the way it is). With these two things in mind, we are ready to see why `political correctness' is important. We can consciously try to reshape our language to create new modes of thinking that change reality. The article at Wikipedia on `political correctness' says this better than I do: The goal of changing language and terminology consists of several points, including: 1. Certain people have their rights, opportunities, or freedoms restricted due to their categorization as members of a group with a derogatory stereotype. 2. This categorization is largely implicit and unconscious, and is facilitated by the easy availability of labeling terminology. 3. By making the labeling terminology problematic, people are made to think consciously about how they describe someone. 4. Once labeling is a conscious activity, individual merits of a person, rather than their perceived membership in a group, become more apparent. In other words, we can take the terms that give power to one group and diffuse that power to make things on a more equal footing. Isn't that what we want in this society to make things fair for everybody? The system only works if we all start out with the same opportunities. Racial bias, sexism, homophobia, etc make it so some start out without the same opportunity. To help eradicate these thoughts and the subsequent actions that stem from these thoughts, we must help change the reality (perception) that leads to them. A real world example is the tendency toward gender neutral terms. Instead of saying fireman which excludes the idea of a woman fulfilling this occupation, we now use the neutral term firefighter so that reality (through language) tells aspiring females that they are not excluded. Simple enough and no big deal right? I should also note that PC is inclusive rather than exclusive, though the majority term is often not noted (as discussed above with the `male' NASCAR driver etc.). The minority term is not supposed to exclude the majority; it is only to make it apparent that it includes the minority as well. For example, bathrooms are now `wheel-chair accessible'. Does that mean it impairs the ability of able-bodied users to use the restroom? No, it just makes it clear that those who may need extra help have it. Another example is the term `hearing-impaired. This is an umbrella term which covers deafness, those partially deaf, or even those in an area too loud to focus in on one audio source (such as a TV in a bar). Again, it is unnecessary to state that those with properly functioning hearing can listen because it is assumed. This discussion pertains to our current `Happy Holiday' debate we hear from the right. This is comparable to `Merry Christmas' in that `Happy Holidays' already covers Christmas (Christmas is the majority holiday), but sometimes we find it necessary to make the minority term overt to make it clear we also include the minority too. If we found it necessary to include the majority terms always, for every NASCAR driver we would go through a ridiculous and redundant list of assumptions (straight, middle-aged, male, etc). Political correctness should not be confused with its counterpart, `Identity Politics'. Identity politics is related to PC, but only in the same way that religion is related to evolution through creation stories, tangentially. In other words, PC and identity politics both deal with the inegalitarian social structures in our society but they take different approaches. Identity politics thinks the best way to settle power differences is to separate from the major group and draw attention to their cause in radical ways, usually (but not always) by attempting to reverse the hierarchy and claim the minority subset is more superior than the majority group. Some examples of I.P. are the Black Panthers, the radical feminist movement (womyn), a lot of nationalist movements, etc. There is some overlap with PC, but to call these separatist groups PC is incorrect because its strategy is exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness. A common criticism says political correctness is mind control and newspeak. In a way this is right: political correctness is attempting to change thoughts and behaviors. These changes are for the better in my view, since they help dissipate the reality that leads to an unjust society. What this criticism does not understand is that the language we use now is not more neutral than the `politically correct' terminology. It is just as loaded and creates its own version of reality and newspeak. The only difference is that one leads to positive results and a more equal society, while the other traps groups in negative connotations (thus subjects them to a less-empowered reality). Another criticism states that political correctness does not change behavior. Although there is debate about the degree language can modify behavior, Sapir and Whorf made compelling arguments that are accepted in the social sciences. If you do not follow my argument about how language shapes reality, a good book for you to read to further understand these points is Language, Thought, and Reality. One would basically have to argue for a referential view of linguistics to say that language does not shape thought and one word is just as good as another (since the concepts are everlasting in their forms). Most linguists would laugh at this assertion. I'm not claiming PC is a cure-all, but it will lead in that direction instead of maintaining the status-quo by using the less-empowering or downright insulting pejorative terms. For these reasons, I believe `political correctness' is valuable. If you also value a society that embraces the American ideal that anyone can make it because we all have the same opportunity, then I hope you find a new appreciation for `politically correct.' If not, then I think you are hindering American ideals in favor of aristocratic beliefs in which established classes or categories have structured favor. I do not expect everyone to agree with this argument. I'm aware there are excesses and it is impossible to accommodate everyone. But that does not mean PC is entirely worthless. Perhaps if you do not agree, at the very least my argument will create more understanding on the topic.

Willkommen

Politics, literature, philosophy, and my thoughts of the day are what you will find in this blog.

A thing has as many senses as there are forces capable of taking possession of it. - Deleuze