• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Is There Too Much Political Correctness Now?

Is there too much political correctness now?

  • Total voters
    74
Moot said:
Local governments are closer to the people....so perhaps it's the people who don't want alcohol sales on Sundays. Don't you think people should have a right to decide what businesses are allowed in their local community?

Medical insurance was mandated because the private sector made insurance a necessity to getting health care.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. I see that you like political correctness being enforced since freedom can be "abused" by making bad choices.
 
Moot said:
If it can be said that people are what they eat...then why can't it be said that people are what they think and believe, as well? If someone has racist thoughts and speech then chances are pretty high that person is probably a racist.

Boycotting and peaceful protests are fundamental to a free capitalist society which is why your hatred for the first amendment is rather odd in your proclamations to love freedom so much. Personally, I would prefer that society make the moral changes and for government to simply to protect that right. Which is pretty much how it is now, isn't it?
Click to expand...

Government is not protecting my right to be who and what I am. Government is not protecting my unalienable right to think my own thoughts, believe my own beliefs, say my own words from people like you who would presume to tell me who and what I must be or else be disciplined in cruel and harmful ways. Who am I, who are you, who is anybody to tell another person that he or she cannot be Christian or Atheist? Can or cannot be liberal or conservative? Can be a wholly bonkers irrational busy body do gooder or a racist?

We certainly should be willing to step up and protect and defend, however we have to, everybody's unalienable rights. And God help us if there are many people who presume the right to dictate morality to everybody else and thereby in every way violate their unalienable rights.
 
AlbqOwl said:
We will be a totalitarian state.
Click to expand...

If that's the way you feel about it, we have always been a totalitarian state.

Again, political correctness only becomes political correctness if it is social control you do not like. We have always used it, and we will continue to use it. The only true difference, over time, is what values, ideas, and politics the public is willing to tolerate. That is all. What is happening now is that the previously dominating segment of society is no longer going to be the most numerous, nor is it nearly as convincing in its previously-proclaimed superiority.

Those that identify with the previous dominating segment of society are only getting a minuscule portion of what other groups in society have had to deal with. It's horrifying to them only because they haven't much at all experience with more extreme versions of control and persecution.
 
Fiddytree said:
If that's the way you feel about it, we have always been a totalitarian state.

Again, political correctness only becomes political correctness if it is social control you do not like. We have always used it, and we will continue to use it. The only true difference, over time, is what values, ideas, and politics the public is willing to tolerate. That is all. What is happening now is that the previously dominating segment of society is no longer going to be the most numerous, nor is it nearly as convincing in its previously-proclaimed superiority.

Those that identify with the previous dominating segment of society are only getting a minuscule portion of what other groups in society have had to deal with. It's horrifying to them only because they haven't much at all experience with more extreme versions of control and persecution.
Click to expand...

It isn't a matter of one side 'having more' than another side. It is a matter of self governance, the right to be who and what we are regardless of what anybody else thinks UNLESS we are violating the rights of somebody else. THAT is what the Founders intended this country to be--a country in which nobody was limited by anything other than their own ability to be as good or successful as they can and want to be with whatever hand they were dealt. And we saw millions rise from pretty much nothing and do amazing things under such a concept of liberty.

PC does not allow people to be who and what they are. PC demands that people be what the PC people say they MUST be if they do not wish to have an angry mob descend upon them and wreck havoc on them.

And that I see as evil.
 
AlbqOwl said:
THAT is what the Founders intended this country to be--a country in which nobody was limited by anything other than their own ability to be as good or successful as they can and want to be with whatever hand they were dealt. And we saw millions rise from pretty much nothing and do amazing things under such a concept of liberty.
Click to expand...

The founders, nor the citizens of the time ever practiced the sort of freedom you seek. They berated each other for having political and social orientations all the time and exercised pressure to ensure that it stayed that way. Social and thought control was practically the hallmark for our separation from Britain.

Again, you're in a fantasy world that never existed.
 
Last edited:
Fiddytree said:
The founders, nor the citizens of the time ever practiced the sort of freedom you seek. They berated each other for having political and social orientations all the time and exercised pressure to ensure that it stayed that way. Social and thought control was practically the hallmark for our separation from Britain.

Again, you're in a fantasy world that never existed.
Click to expand...

Well, I respectfully disagree. In the Founder's speeches, in their writings to each other, and in their dealings with each other, I can't find a shred of PC in any of it. I think every single one of them would find the PC police of modern times abhorrent and everything opposite of what the Founders intended this country to be/
 
AlbqOwl said:
In the Founder's speeches, in their writings to each other, and in their dealings with each other, I can't find a shred of PC in any of it. I think every single one of them would find the PC police of modern times abhorrent and everything opposite of what the Founders intended this country to be/
Click to expand...

So you have no awareness of the Sons of Liberty's activity, how the Founders dealt with African American issues, how they perceived more traditionalist Brit-Americans after the war, or any other instances of democracy's mob mentality? Goodness, even after the second generation, you'd think someone like yourself would at least be able to address Tocqueville.

The founding generation would find much to their dismay. That wouldn't be denied, but they employed social pressure like anyone else.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. In any constitutional state in Europe every sort of religious and political theory may be freely preached and disseminated; for there is no country in Europe so subdued by any single authority as not to protect the man who raises his voice in the cause of truth from the consequences of his hardihood. If he is unfortunate enough to live under an absolute government, the people are often on his side; if he inhabits a free country, he can, if necessary, find a shelter behind the throne. The aristocratic part of society supports him in some countries, and the democracy in others. But in a nation where democratic institutions exist, organized like those of the United States, there is but one authority, one element of strength and success, with nothing beyond it.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe‚, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed forever, since he has offended the only authority that is able to open it. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused to him. Before making public his opinions he thought he had sympathizers; now it seems to him that he has none any more since he has revealed himself to everyone; then those who blame him criticize loudly and those who think as he does keep quiet and move away without courage. He yields at length, overcome by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides into silence, as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth. – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Ch 15.
Click to expand...
 
Fiddytree said:
So you have no awareness of the Sons of Liberty's activity, how the Founders dealt with African American issues, how they perceived more traditionalist Brit-Americans after the war, or any other instances of democracy's mob mentality? Goodness, even after the second generation, you'd think someone like yourself would at least be able to address Tocqueville.

The founding generation would find much to their dismay. That wouldn't be denied, but they employed social pressure like anyone else.
Click to expand...

I actually did a major college paper on Tocqueville in college. He knew the difference between politics and liberty and politics and political correctness (though that phrase had not yet been coined in his day) too which your post suggests you may not know the difference.

Social pressure is one thing--aLL our laws used to result from that to protect unalienable rights when these days they are too often passed to give government more control to dictate to the people what their rights will be. Political correctness is not social pressure. Political correctness is ideological and self righteous bullying. I know the difference between those two things too.
 
AlbqOwl said:
I actually did a major college paper on Tocqueville in college. He knew the difference between politics and liberty and politics and political correctness (though that phrase had not yet been coined in his day) too which your post suggests you may not know the difference.

Social pressure is one thing--aLL our laws used to result from that to protect unalienable rights when these days they are too often passed to give government more control to dictate to the people what their rights will be. Political correctness is not social pressure. Political correctness is ideological and self righteous bullying. I know the difference between those two things too.
Click to expand...

And somehow the social pressure isn't ideological?
 
It's just the signs of conservative mainstream culture dying. Large amounts of conservative culture is being relegated to fringe groups while formerly liberal fringe groups are becoming more mainstream.
 
Fiddytree said:
And somehow the social pressure isn't ideological?
Click to expand...

The social pressures that Tocqueville would have aproved or that the Founders would have approved were not in any way ideological. They were all voluntary and not to be enforced first, and were in the interest of individual liberties/unalienable rights second and the general welfare, third.

The idea that an angry mob should descend on somebody for no other offense than the person held an opinion the mob didn't like would have been unthinkable to all of them. Nevertheless they did not see that it was the federal government's authority or jurisdiction to prevent those colonies who DID practice political correctness from doing so. They trusted a free people to learn and grow and correct its mistakes.

They were to a man determined that the federal government have no authority of any kind to dictate to any citizen what he or she was required to think, speak, or believe about anything.
 
AlbqOwl said:
The social pressures that Tocqueville would have aproved or that the Founders would have approved were not in any way ideological. They were all voluntary and not to be enforced first, and were in the interest of individual liberties/unalienable rights second.
Click to expand...

Being voluntary does not remove ideology. Furthermore, your definition of voluntary seems to fly in the face of what Tocqueville actually stated, observed, and what countless others had experienced in the past.

The idea that an angry mob should descend on somebody for no other offense than the person held an opinion the mob didn't like would have been unthinkable to all of them. Nevertheless they did not see that it was the federal government's authority or jurisdiction to prevent those colonies who DID practice political correctness from doing so. They trusted a free people to learn and grow and correct its mistakes.
Click to expand...

My fifth great uncle didn't seem to mind too much when he and the Sons of Liberty went on their terror sprees against not only employees of the Crown, but also those that were mere loyalists. Political correctness does not need to have the federal government involved, but it can.

They were to a man determined that the federal government have no authority of any kind to dictate to any citizen what he or she was required to think, speak, or believe about anything.
Click to expand...

That's not true, as we have had legal ruination of speech in the first two administrations, but that's not a requirement of political correctness either. The public could ensure that a man would be persecuted for his social and political opinions.
 
grip said:
Don't believe in fairness, huh? Bet you would if you were on the wrong end of unfair practices. ;)
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but I doubt it.

I've won some and lost some, and have never really felt that fairness should be enforced. I'd rather have the opportunity to fail in a free system than be protected in a controlled system.
 
Starbuck said:
Perhaps, but I doubt it.

I've won some and lost some, and have never really felt that fairness should be enforced. I'd rather have the opportunity to fail in a free system than be protected in a controlled system.
Click to expand...


You know what makes us different than the animal kingdoms 'survival of the fittest' or civilized? Our laws, based on equity.
 
grip said:
You know what makes us different than the animal kingdoms 'survival of the fittest' or civilized? Our laws, based on equity.
Click to expand...

Weird, I always thought it was the combination of opposable thumbs and the ability to vocalize intelligible words.
 
Starbuck said:
Weird, I always thought it was the combination of opposable thumbs and the ability to vocalize intelligible words.
Click to expand...

That was part of the physical evolution that lead to crops, cities and laws. Civilization and writing, as we know it, has only been around since about 5000BC.

It was our social skills (working together) that ultimately propelled our species ahead of others allowing us to propagate, overcome our environment and expand our population.
 
Starbuck said:
This is definitely true, but I suppose that's a risk anyone takes each time they say anything.

Just kind of a part of living in society.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, there will definitely be SOME kind of backlash when you make such statements in a public venue, but what of the newest case, where the man kind of made a private comment to his girlfriend, and then SHE made it public? I don't know what to think of such cases.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom