{"id":2456,"date":"2012-09-12T05:12:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T05:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/09\/the-lie-that-was-liberalism.html"},"modified":"2012-09-12T05:12:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T05:12:00","slug":"the-lie-that-was-liberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/09\/the-lie-that-was-liberalism.html","title":{"rendered":"The lie that was liberalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So the State Department \u2013 yes, the State Department \u2013 has an officer, John Robinson, who is rolling out a list of phrases and words that should no longer be used<\/a>. \u00a0Remember when Political Correctness began? \u00a0That was back in the day. \u00a0The term referred to that political unspeak whereby politicians would talk around an issue rather than call a spade a spade. \u00a0Eventually, it came to be used for this strange creeping societal\u00a0censorship\u00a0that was beginning to rush in to fill the space left by the liberal revolution.<\/p>\n

The liberal revolution had, if you remember, promised a world without rules. \u00a0A world of total freedom. \u00a0A world of live-and-let-live, of respecting differences, of challenging authority, of\u00a0diversity\u00a0and tolerance and complete freedom to do, think, and say whatever you wanted. \u00a0Yes Political Correctness appeared to some to be contradicting that promise. \u00a0Suddenly a growing list of words, images,\u00a0statements, phrases and other expressions were coming under fire. <\/p>\n

To be honest, it began long before the term PC was being used. \u00a0Even in the heyday of the Great Liberal Promise, you had running alongside it the\u00a0feminist\u00a0movement dedicated to overturning the English language and eliminating any and all references to the male pronoun. \u00a0Even then, we should have thought, \u201cHey, how can you say we must change the language if the promise is a world without rules?\u201d \u00a0But then, feminism in its purer form was never simply a liberal movement, and many non-liberals conceded some good points that existed in the women\u2019s rights platform.<\/p>\n

By the time the 90s rolled around, and Political Correctness was being applied to outrage against the wrong term for African Americans, or a sports team\u2019s use of an Indian as a\u00a0mascot, folks argued that there was no real commission doing it, so it really wasn\u2019t censorship. \u00a0You couldn\u2019t point to a Politically Correct McCarthy\u00a0holding hearings and placing violators on a black list. \u00a0In fact, as often as not, you couldn\u2019t pin down a source at all. \u00a0Somewhere, somehow, someone said something was offensive and that\u2019s all it took.<\/p>\n

By the 00s, however, things began to change. \u00a0More and more people were invoking \u2018that offends\u2019 to\u00a0stifle\u00a0speech they didn\u2019t like. \u00a0No longer hiding in corners or back alleys in Cuba, folks were willing to come into the\u00a0light\u00a0and\u00a0boldly\u00a0proclaim their\u00a0disgust\u00a0with a particular word or phrase and demand retribution for its usage. \u00a0A growing list of things began to be questioned. \u00a0The violence of Islam, as we are seeing this very hour<\/a>, brought many newspapers to censor themselves rather than partake in a cartoon that could cause death and suffering. \u00a0Gay rights groups lobbied to have words and phrases, like \u2018that\u2019s so gay\u2019,\u00a0stricken\u00a0from public use under\u00a0penalty\u00a0of punishment. <\/p>\n

But in all these cases, there was still no link to the government that anyone could see. \u00a0People in the government may have chosen to avoid certain words, and there was always the ability to use PC to hammer down those with whom we disagree. \u00a0But you just didn\u2019t see people in the government coming out and saying \u2018we better stop using these words.\u2019 \u00a0Until now. <\/p>\n

Now, we have a member of the State Department not only saying there are words that have to go, but explaining that the words and phrases used and not used should be based on complex historical origins of these phrases. \u00a0 If some group somewhere might be offended because of some ages old origin of a phrase, that should be enough.<\/p>\n

I know. \u00a0I\u2019m sure this isn\u2019t the first time this has happened at the State Department. \u00a0I\u2019m sure the government and agencies have already been saying what should and shouldn\u2019t be said, at least in the State Department. \u00a0But two things. \u00a0First, this seems like a general statement to \u2018readers\u2019 of what to say and not to say. \u00a0There doesn\u2019t seem to be a limit. \u00a0There doesn\u2019t seem to be \u2018this is for State Department employees.\u2019 \u00a0It\u2019s for everyone.<\/p>\n

Second, the idea that a phrase may be offensive because of some long, historical roots in a complex origin that we may not fully understand, or that may be based on partial understandings of the actual events, boggles the mind. \u00a0How much of our language might be based on such things? \u00a0How many idioms or off handed remarks might find their roots in some time in the past that could offend someone? \u00a0The fact that \u00a0people\u00a0apparently\u00a0are already offended by the use of these suggests the worst thing of all: it\u2019s not that PC is censorship with manners that we need to worry about, it\u2019s that PC is just what we want. \u00a0We the people want PC, as long as it applies to everyone else. The lie that was liberalism was just that. \u00a0Nobody ever wanted such a society. \u00a0They wanted, as they always have and always will, a society based on rules and restrictions centered around them and imposed on everyone else.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the State Department \u2013 yes, the State Department \u2013 has an officer, John Robinson, who is rolling out a list of phrases and words that should no longer be used. \u00a0Remember when Political Correctness began? \u00a0That was back in the day. \u00a0The term referred to that political unspeak whereby politicians would talk around an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe lie that was liberalism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So the State Department - yes, the State Department - has an officer, John Robinson, who is rolling out a list of phrases and words that should no longer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/09\/the-lie-that-was-liberalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The lie that was liberalism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So the State Department - 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