Freedom of Speech(not) and Politically Correct - Part Duex.

By the way, i am glad to see that a substantive discussion of what political rectitude means, and how it is used has taken off. It certainly was never my intent to begin a discussion of what constitutes rape, nor was that the point of my anectdote. When i am able to return for a longer period of time, i will attempt to explain myself more thoroughly. I am also abashed that i seem to have created a false impression of what my friend intended with his series of lectures.

I'll help explain it to you.

One is a comment about the argument. The other is a comment about the person.

An intelligent person can brainfart. I am challenging your arguments while you decide to call me a fool.

True, both are comparatively caustic. but I am addressing your argument while you neglect to do so altogether with me. Preferring instead to use ad hominems.

So the best way to explain this to you is that my ad argumentum was comparatively caustic to your ad hominem but I was addressing the argument. Which you failed to do altogether.

I have no complaints about your sneer, I have complaints about the lacking substance behind it.



Correction.

Earlier I'd chosen to ignore the brainfart so as not to make it the focus of the thread. I was perfectly willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that said brainfart was accidental (which I speculated about).

I was then willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about whether that was a relevant point at all to what you were saying (I still don't think it is).

Then you started your sneering and derision of the censure with which you were met by deriding it as dogmatic in basis and "political rectitude".

After your sneering I returned to state that your disparaging of the well-deserved censure you received was insipid.

You tried to use me as a basis upon which to disparage the censure from others by saying that they were engaging in political rectitude while I was not.

I returned to posit that you are simply dismissing censure as "political rectitude" as the only difference between myself and the others you disparaged was that I'd chosen that the censure wasn't worth my while.

So feel free to censure me for the abrasive language with which I refer to your arguments. And frankly I don't mind your namecalling and snide comments either.

But do try to also construct an argument. As the sneer in and of itself is meaningless.



I've said nothing of the sort. I am saying that your arguments were idiotic. I am saying that your sneer does nothing to address this contention and that there is a comparative difference.

I expressed contempt for your argument. Yes, it was not stated mildly. You chose simply to call me a fool.

Like I said, I don't mind it. But wish you also had the substance to support your position.

Devoid of my "sneer" I raised several points that you should address (with "sneer" if it suits your fancy). Here it is, devoid of "sneer".

You are simply deriding censure as "political rectitude". You illustrate no basis upon which to do so. Furthermore your censure is comparable and this amounts to intellectual hypocrisy.

The difference is not "moral" it's of intellectual honesty. I am not censuring you for your sneer. I am censuring you for not having anything but sneer to bring to the table.



Incorrect. You started deriding the censure with which you were met.

I decided to say how intellectually bankrupt your arguments were.

You decided to return the caustic tone, but devoid of any argument whatsoever.

Like I said, I have no problem whatsoever with your sneer. But when that's your only stock and store I'll point that out. Feel free to address the part made bold above with as much sneer as you'd like. As long as you address it I am happy.

I do see a big difference between expressing contempt for an argument rather than contempt for a person. But this is a nuance I do not mind if you fail to appreciate. As long as you address the issue I don't much care how you do it.

My complaints were that you'd opted to ignore the issue altogether.

Which is what the "political rectitude" arguments are. A ploy to deflect censure.

It's just a name for "they disagree with me".

Once again, i don't at present have much time for this. I find it ludicrous that you attempt to posit a qualitative difference in being caustic. If you are caustic with someone, you are very likely to get a negative response. I've noted that i haven't time to repond in detail at the moment, i'm stealing time to make this brief response. I was not deriding censure as political rectitude, i was not deriding anything. I was pointing out that the use of "no means no" is the use of a slogan, and that sloganeering, in my experience, is a dogmatic response. I have also pointed out that i agree with the principle, and have no brief to support anyone's defense of actions which are labelled as rape. To address the particulars of a circumstance is to deal intelligently with that circumstance; to simply repeat a slogan which by implication is applicable in any and all cases is simply to indulge in a dogmatic response.

So i take it that if you do not approve of how someone responds to someone else, but absent any ad hominem, that authorizes you to address said person in a manner which you have yourself characterized as caustic? You have judged me, found me lacking, and are now authorized to punish me with your tone and content? Nonsense--i offered no insults to Soz or Dlowan or Habibi, i disagreed with them, and said why i disagreed. To me, this is part and parcel with your regularly occurring penchant for attempting to slam someone on an allegation of them not having met your rigorous standards of logical analysis. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that i am less than impressed with your ability to practice sophistry.

I don't complain about a negative response. I complained that it was an intellectually bankrupt one.

What I was hoping for was one in which there was a morsel of intellectual honesty.

If it would be negative in addition to that, it's fine.



Odd that you should say that. Please refresh your memory with your own words:





You "take it" incorrectly. I've never said that anything "authorizes" me to do anything. I've simply derided your inability to respond to a caustic ad argumentum with any argument, choosing instead to use an ad hominem.

Like I said, I care not a whit if you are caustic, or if you sneer, or even if you call me names and insult. My sole complaint was that you failed to do anything but that.



No, I have judged you, found you lacking and decided to censure and challenge you. You are doing plenty of censuring as well and frankly I don't see any of it as "punishment", just censure.



I did not accuse you of insulting them. I accused you of using an intellectually bankrupt argument to disparage their position as dogmatic and said that I found that tactic to be a brainfart.



Yeah, you say this a lot. But since you can't illustrate it it's of no consequence to me. This is a good example of a meaningless insult without substantiation.

I think most of the discomfort with PC stems from the efforts of social workers, progressive politicians and others to legislate courtesy. Courtesy relies on common sense, whereas formal rules can be arbitrary, and frequently are. For example, I would never call Sozobe "deaf and dumb", which I understand was fairly standard usage 50 years ago. It's common sense that nobody likes to be called "dumb", which makes it easy to avoid. Contrast this with "African American" vs "Black" or "Negro", which is simply "Black" in Spanish. We all know who the speaker is talking about, and that it's not Egyptian-Americans or white immigrants from South Africa, all of which are African Americans too. "Black", "Negro", and "Moor" capture who is being talked about, "African American" does not. There's something very arbitrary about a rule that commands people to prefer "African American". As a result, rules like this make it very easy to put your foot in your mouth without knowing it.

I agree with Sozobe (as almost always). The accusation of political correctness is overused and has become meaningless. Another observation that annoys me is that PC is always is an accusation made from non-left to left people. On Able2Know, conservative participants have repeatedly accused me of "classist rhetoric" etc. because I use words like "rich" and "poor", "upper class" and "lower class" in political threads. No liberal ever accused me of using "black". Nevertheless, nobody calls it "PC" when conservatives do it, and everybody takes it for granted that PC is a liberal vice. This is a mystery to me, even if it's not a terribly interesting mystery.

It's not a mystery to me. Look up it's origins.

http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/7/7-862.html

I think you give your own answers for why the PC lingo gets pinned in the left there Thomas.



How many social workers and progressive politicians hold conservative views? If, as you say, the legislated courtesy comes from those on the left wouldn't it be natural for the resistance to it to come from the right? (Although I have seen quite a few posts complaining about political correctness also coming from those on the left who frequent A2K.)

Setanta,

After a long and thoughtfull ride on the elevator I realized that if my tone is objectionable to you (and is not necessary to my point) then I should just apologize and retract it.

So I apologize for my caustic tone and will try to avoid it.

But my arguments stand, if less caustically.

Interesting link. Thanks!

In addition to what fishin' said there is ample evidence that the term (in it's modern meaning) was coined by the left to refer to their own ideals.

E.g.

"You think women should do all the dishes? That's not politically correct."

That would fit with observations Setanta made about militant ideology.

The link I gave above goes into it a bit. In the 80's it was turned around. It's such a general ploy that everyone is in on it but it really is traditionally something used to refer to leftist and then liberal ideology.

" The students who were willing to discuss the topic in terms of relative responsibility for the outcome of a situation in which both parties were to some point active participants displayed an attempt to honestly judge circumstances without reference to a code of thought. The few die-hards who contended that the result was rape regardless of the preliminaries seemed to me to have been motivated by a dogmatic adherence to a description of male-female relationships based in a theory of personal control (perhaps one of which they were unaware) which was not grounded in either reality or a concept of justice and responsibility."

Actually, I for one, Setanta was fully aware of your point - but honestly disagree with it.

You assume that the few women who held to the LAW and - and to what seems to me to be an obviously ethical opinion - against the chorus of dissent from their classmates - were doing so from "dogmatic adherence to a description of male-female relationships based in a theory of personal control (perhaps one of which they were unaware) which was not grounded in either reality or a concept of justice and responsibility."

Er - several things seem to me to be wrong here - and hence with your later fury about people daring to comment on your assumptions.

How do you know whether or not these women were aware of the situational issues, but still kept to their ethical standards - never mind in a room full of dissent - on an area which, statistically speaking, some of them may well have known the pointy end of...?

You ASSUME, in support of your argument, that what you are wanting to argue is the case (I know you added the "it seemed to me", but I am arguing with what you see.) This is a silly argument, logically speaking - what makes it even sillier is that youy have added that you do not believe these students were much infected with the horrors of militant feminism, but yet assume it is such an infection, not their own brains, which is leading them to argue thusly.

You also - after having thrown such a bomb in here, and having your argument criticised (and it WAS your argument that was criticised - though you keep trying to say that some of this criticism is hysterical and mindless) keep saying that you support the view that any of the cases would be rape - that to think differently is more evidence of the same ridiculous mindlessness - yet this is what you said:

"The few die-hards who contended that the result was rape regardless of the preliminaries seemed to me to have been motivated by a dogmatic adherence to a description of male-female relationships based in a theory of personal control (perhaps one of which they were unaware) which was not grounded in either reality or a concept of justice and responsibility."

This would appear to signal that you did not agree that it was rape - I certainly read it as such - was stunned - and decided to move on and attack your ARGUMENT, instead - because I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I picked up on Sozobe's use of the "no means no", and your critique of it as a mindless slogan to comment on your argument about it by commenting that it is the law - which was a critique of your critique, I suppose. It is certainly the law here.

You, having chosen to deride it as a mindless slogan (another assumption, by the way - many people have choses to use that slogan with great mindfulness as part of a campaign which has changed - a tiny bit - the awful ways in which alleged rape victims have been treated, as ayou well know) then decided that this was another example of what you were already assuming, and had a tantrum.

You then came back, again, to make the same charge - again because of a series of assumptions you are making.


To me, your position on this thread has exemplified the worst aspects of my contention that anti-PC is the new PC.

Very civilized of you CdK, and i do not consider you a fool, else i would never bother to discuss anything with you. As you can see, i have my work cut out to respond to everyone here. I've spent most of the last eight hours repairing data linkage corruptions in my company's most crucial data file. I did so with the invaluable help of, and despite the advice of, the technical department of the company which wrote the software. I am mentally exhausted.

I realize that i had not well expressed the tenor of the conversation which i had with that professor. His series of lectures were designed to teach the students to understand, first personal responsibilities for one's actions, and second, personal responsibilities for one's beliefs. He did not object to holding the opinion that "no means no," he objected to holding it as sloganeering, or for dogmatic reasons. He wished his students to come to that conclusion because they had given due consideration to the topic, and had concluded that the slogan and the dogma had a very justifiable basis in reality. He also wished them to understand that opinions which are slogans are no opinions at all, and that dogmatic adherence to set of beliefs based upon recieved wisdom is not an exercise in ethical understanding. When Soz reacted with "no means no," i did not realize that she was responding appropriately the to the context of the years in question, which is what she later explained, and which i acknowledged. That is why i characterized that as sloganeering and a dogmatic reaction. When she explained that she had animadverted to the slogan because of the context, i had a "doh" moment, and felt rather ashamed of not recognizing her quick wit. That is why i commented upon her perspicacity in recognizing that. Habibi, i now realize, assumed that i had meant that when you push somebody's buttons and get punched in the mouth for it, that i had meant that when you hurl insulting slurs considered not to be "PC" at someone, this would be a likely outcome--therefore, based upon this assumption of his, his response makes sense. It did not make sense to me at the time, because i was only speaking of the simple case in which one might goads another until that other reacts violently--i did not have "un-PC" remarks in mind, so Habibi's response did not mean anything to me in that context. I did genuinely doubt that Dlowan was correct in asserting that "no means no" is the law. It seems that i should stand corrected in the matter, although one of the statements Soz provided from her links (which i haven't had time to read, and am not inclined to read, as the specific topic of what constitutes rape was not what i was trying to get at) does seem to cast doubt on the concept, to wit: "- While the law does not require proof of resistance, the lack of resistance is a fact that a jury can take into account in deciding whether the accused reasonably believed the intercourse was consensual."--which is more or less what i had in mind in questioning whether "no means no" were in fact the law.

Dlowan, i will respond later. I will add that you are as guilty of making assumptions about what i mean as you have accused me of being.

Finally, Thomas, i have always made the point that political rectitude, while a child of leftist militancy, had infected the right as much as the left--my objection is not the intent or the content, but the to the toughtlessness of dogmatic positions.

The evolution of the term PC has already been described. Interesting that a term first used by Marxists to describe the party line, was coopted by liberals to describe that which conformed to their social concepts, and still later became a term of contempt at the hands of conservatives.

The unifying element of course is intolerance. There is little to be preferred in the contemporary insistence on euphamisms for disabilities or certain protected groups of people or even of the female 50.5% of the population, compared to its earlier forms. The Victorian useage of "limbs" for leg is no less ridiculous to the discerning mind than is the contemporary "people of color".

Perhaps the ultimate expression of the absurdity of all this is the creation of "free speech zones" on the campuses of universities. Outside them apparently this freedom does not exist. No one seems to notice the irony.

<parody>

I have criticism for certain criticism because criticism is against free speech.

</parody>

I notice the irony, I suppose it might be a different one though.

You missed the point.

No, I disagree with the point George.

To me, political correctness is an expression of cynicism.

Clearly, for those who maintain and advance a position of PC there is the belief that people cannot be trusted with the weapons of subversion: words and thoughts.

It is also an expression of sanctimonious smugness.

"I am PC, unlike the great unwashed, I get it."

It is demonstrative of a complete lack of any sense of humor.

It is a set of intellectual shackles.

It is the Leftist version of trying Stokes for teaching evolution.

It is a narrowing of thought that everyone (on the Left or the Right) should denounce.

Indeed, we should all divest ourselves of PC thought. It represents narrowing of thought.

I believe that the unfortunate victime of the Dayton, Tennessee "Monkey Trial" was Mr. John Scopes--charged with violation of the then Tennessee law against the teaching of the theory of evolution. The right is as guilty as the left, contemporaneously, of imposing dogmatic thought up its adherents, without regard to the origin of the practice. In fact, with the (rather politically brilliant) ploy of "the Silent Majority" of Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972, the imposition of agenda as dogma on those who would adhere was under way with the right in America.