Political correctness is getting ever more tyrannical and sickening. I have been haunted by that case in Switzerland where a writer received a four-and-a-half suspended jail sentence for having quoted the Jewish writer Nahum Goldman "out of context" - by leaving out a handful of words that had no significance whatsoever to the actual excerpt in question.
The sentence was passed out, as everybody understands, because it was necessary for the presiding judge to display political correctness before the powers that be - and ***not*** because some horrible ethnic slight had been committed.
I have been reading papers to find an appropriate voice to put this kind of socially tolerated abuse of the judicial process into some kind of perspective, and one of my favorite writers, Laird Wilcox, came to mind, who wrote in a Foreword to a collection of some of his essays:
"Beginning as far back as 1968, it became obvious to me that many people who had attached themselves to the civil rights movement had another agenda altogether, and it had nothing to do with freedom, equality before the law, or fairness.
It was an ideological agenda that embraced, among other things, the very essence of racism itself. It was committed to the massive increase in the power of the state and a corresponding decline in individual freedom, civil liberties and political and economic rights for all races. (...)
One can do things in the name of "helping others" that would be unthinkable otherwise, and noble causes quickly compromise themselves by letting the end justify the means.
"Reverse racism" was quick in forming. . . . It became institutionalized and legitimized in the form of "affirmative action" in 1968, and today we are on the verge of a complete role reversal, where the victims and the victimizers once again change places and the victimization itself continues unabated.
Literally millions of people, including many government employees on every level, have a stake in the continuation, not the alleviation of "discrimination" and "bigotry." On the campus, careers are developed around "identifying" and managing problems of "prejudice" around issues of gender and race. . . . An entire body of law has developed around issues of gender and race, as well as other designated victims and minorities. Advocacy organizations, journalistic careers, and political reputations depend upon continuing religious, racial and gender problems.
As specific problems move toward amelioration, they are simply redefined, and the definitions are broadened to take in more and more personal and private behaviors. What constitutes "discrimination" now embodies behaviors which, objectively, are without any discriminatory intent, and a vast and pervasive double standard has become institutionalized. Our deepest and most personal attitudes, opinions and beliefs are becoming subject to scrutiny and censure by a predatory and unscrupulous "thought police."
One example of this is the incredible over-reaction to unfounded claims of racist and anti-Semitic harassment and violence. Simple human feelings . . . are treated with disproportionate gravity, and ethnic and religious special interest groups are demanding, and receiving, preferential treatment under the law, which is itself a form of prejudice and bigotry."
Thought for the Day:
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog."
(Mark Twain)