By Reece Keusch ’19
One of our most basic inalienable human rights is under a rapidly growing threat. Political correctness is an impending danger to freedom of speech in the Western world. This problem goes beyond diplomatic and sensible politics, and must be defined as an extremist movement.
This threat is not only found in society, but has found its way to the world’s governments and leaders. According to The Independant, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently interrupted a student at a Q&A after she had used the word “mankind.” He responded, saying, “We like to say peoplekind, not necessarily mankind because it’s more inclusive.” Not only is this mansplai… excuse me, people-splaining, but peoplekind isn’t even a word in the dictionary. The only thing that incidents like this are serving to do is to further divide the regressive left from not only conservatives and independents, but even from many other liberals.
This problem of Political Correctness has also taken asylum at many college campuses around the country, and has taken many different forms such as speech codes, violence towards people with opposing opinions (as seen at places like UC Berkeley), and most commonly bias by teachers.
Student Cailin Jeffers of Northern Arizona University was on Fox show Tucker Carlson Tonight last year, and talked about how she had points taken off her essay for using the sexist word – you guessed it – “mankind.” This type of behavior by teachers, the most influential people on our next generation, is a threat to several of the American ideals our country was founded upon.
On Carlson’s show last week, journalist Cathy Areu explained Purdue University’s new writing guide, and how it would be against words like mailman, Manhattan, humanity, man-made, and even woman. The common theme: the word “man”. The argument made by Areu is that it is not gender-neutral language, and is offensive to many people. While this could seem like a reasonable argument considering the previous history of the workplace being male-dominated, the origin of the word actually has nothing to do with gender.
Online Etymology Dictionary finds the origin of human to come from the Latin word “humanus,” or “humane, philanthropic, kind, gentle, polite; learned, refined, civilized.” It even defines the word man from Old English as “human being, person (male or female).”
I personally can’t imagine anyone I know being legitimately offended by this language, whether they know the words’ origins or not. This problem would not be present if not for many professors brainwashing the young populace and much of the mainstream media trying to brainwash everyone else.
In a Channel 4 interview with host Cathy Newman, Clinical Psychologist Jordan Peterson asked why someone’s right to not be offended trumps someone else’s right to freedom of speech. The reason amendments, like the First Amendment, are in place is so that no one can take away our hu-people rights that have historically led to tyrannical and oppressive governments.
While some political correctness may sometimes seem like a good thing, it is more about the principle, and not so much about the outcome. Yes, Americans should value respect, equality, and unity, but when events have been shut down because they’re offensive, and people have been banned from websites like youtube and twitter due to “hurtful language,” there is a clear issue with the basic ideals of people who support any sort of political correctness.
That’s not saying that you can’t think someone is callous, or that you can’t disagree with them, but to imply that their right to think freely is less valuable than yours is despicable.
While ideas like those at Purdue may seem somewhat harmless on the surface, this is the kind of ideology this is centered around is basic Marxist beliefs.
While nothing extremely severe has occurred in the US by the action taken by suppressors of free speech besides national terrorist group Antifa, there are places in Europe that have collapsing societies due to this problem.
The idea of hate-speech is very prominent in the US and Europe. The issue is that hate-speech is often equated to violence, in that people can be “hurt” by both. If this was hypothetically classified as “violence” it would justify taking legal action, or even using violence to defend yourself against so called “hate-speech. In this theoretical world, anything that goes against radical leftists’ beliefs can be considered hate-speech, as long as someone is offended.
Obviously we have the Constitution’s protection at the moment, but many people seem to interpret the First Amendment as “freedom from speech” instead of “freedom of speech.” A great example is Bill Nye the Science Guy, who, according to The Washington Times, implied that it would be reasonable to charge climate change deniers with a crime. Not only is this irrational and flat out immoral, but it goes against the unspoken scientific rule to question everything (also known as skepticism). So much for being the “Science” Guy.
Anyways, there is a clear parallel between Nye and the rest of these peoples’ radical ideas and the cultural Marxism and censorship of communist nations such as Soviet Russia and Mao’s China. The BBC talks about how there were people in Soviet Russia who would risk their lives to share ideas and work that country deemed illegal.
We already have early warning signs in the USA of censorship when it comes to differing ideas, but the fact that the next generation is being bred into the thought police is quite worrying. There is already a struggle to keep saying whatever we want to say without censorship, and it is a truly special thing to be the only country with complete freedom of speech, discussion, and ideas.
These liberties are often taken for granted, and they are not something to be given up without a fight. George Orwell once said, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” and now that liberty is under fire by ignorance. The issue is that for some people, ignorance is bliss.
