Should We Shun Political Correctness?

by Tom King  (c) 2013

I just got jumped on with both feet by a conservative Facebook Friend. She was not happy with me because I posted this in response to another poster who stated that "If I had a nickel for every 'retard' who thinks he can stop the climate from changing......"


I responded with this.

• "Retard" Really? Dan, it's not people with developmental disabilities who think we can stop the climate from changing. I wish you wouldn't use that word as an insult. I have a Down's Syndrome nephew who doesn't believe in global warming either. As President Reagan said, "It's not so much what our liberal friends don't know as it is what they do know that ain't so." IQ has little to do with it. First, let me make it clear, I never said I was offended.  I simply addressed the use of an easy to use insulting expression that I see a LOT of shrieking liberals use that is kind of offensive. They call US that. What I wanted to express was that it is not actually the  low IQ folk who are pushing this. We need not be afraid of ordinary folk or even developmentally challenged people.  It's people with just enough intelligence to think they are smarter than everybody else that think they can run the world. 

Then it got ugly with another commentator jumping in and claiming I was stupid to be "offended" by every little thing and that I was the reason the world was in the shape it is.

So I thought I had a little 'splainin' to do.  I've made this comment to several conservative friends lately with regard to using the word "retard" as an insult.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not arguing political correctness here.  What I'm arguing in favor of here is the Golden Rule.  It's got nothing to do with political correctness, just kindness.  I think if we're going to argue in the public square against socialism, global warming hysteria, big government or excessive taxation, that we ought to we beat them, not with name-calling, but with logic, reason and facts.

To his credit, Dan did apologize for using the word as an insult and I respect him for that.  It really is frustrating to get pounded day after day with this stuff and to not lash back.

Those of us who are Christians are under orders with regard to the whole name-calling business.  Christ said that he who calls another a "fool" is himself in danger of hell fire.  That's pretty serious and calling someone a "retard" seems awfully close to doing what Jesus advised us not to do.  I say better safe than sorry.


I'm not without sin in this.  I've used words like idiot and moron before and I'm not terribly proud of it.  Sometimes, when frustrated beyond endurance we do resort to name-calling. It's not something we should ever do casually and something we should always be willing to apologize for instantly.  Name-calling is niether a reasonable, rational nor particularly effective argument on behalf of your opinion.  Your ability to put down other human beings on the basis of their disabilities, race, creed or color does not factor into whether or not your ideology is correct.  Usually it only makes you look less credible. After all, if you're reduced to name-calling, how good can your argument really be?


Good manners used to be important.  I miss civility and I believe that, as conservatives, we should embrace a return to civility, lest we find ourselves down in the mud with those who would make our society harder, nastier and more thoroughly enslaved.

My proposal is that conservatives like me and you at least act MORE intelligent than our opponents.  Name calling makes you look like you have a weak argument.  Liberals do it to us all the time and the truly self-centered herd-follower types clap in approval and fall in line behind the name-caller.  Do we really want to encourage that sort of behavior on our side?  To win in the court of ideas, we must be better than our opponents; smarter, kinder and wiser. 

I do understand the frustration with political correctness. But I would argue that good manners is not political correctness - not if you exercise your free will and choose to be polite.  Scripture counsels let your yes be yes and your no be no. The willingness to argue a point on merit alone instead of on mere rhetoric is something else that has been, sadly, rather lost in this debate. 

Political correctness comes from fear of what others think; fear that you might be spurned by the herd.  If you are not afraid of the herd's collective opinion and I am not afraid of the disapproval of the herd, then why don't we choose not to act like them.  Name calling is a technique used by thugs and bullies to keep the herd in line.  It's just not something people with as good an argument against global warming and socialism as we have should dirty our hands with.  That's all I'm saying.

Tom

Marvin the Martian Issues Statement on Illudium P-36 Explosive Space Modulator Rights

NSA wiretaps Curiosity Rover transmission from Mars.

(6/22/2013 - Houston)  NSA wiretaps intercepted the transmission below from the Mars Rover "Curiosity:  As a result the Obama administration is pressuring the Martian government for more restrictive Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator Laws.

Have You People Got Nothing Better to Do Than Attack Paula Deen?

The Food Nazis Swarm

(c) 2013 by Tom King

There was a piece in, of all places, Forbes today with the headline  "Can Paula Deen Survive Without the Food Network: I Hope Not". The snarky piece was written by Caleb something or other (I'm not going to bother to look up his name; he doesn't deserve the effort).  In case you didn't know Paula's been booted off the Food Network for admitting she may have used the N-Word in the past.  They waited till she issued a videotaped apology, then dumped her.  Paula's fans are up in arms as well they should be.

I am sick of the hit pieces on people like Paula Deen. I'm sick of the smug sense of superiority. When we start calling in the Speech Police, we are living in the world of Big Brother and I don't like it. Paula's Southern cooking style has always drawn the ire of the Food Nazi crowd and they've done everything they could to bring her down.  Anthony Bourdain called her the worst chef in America and accused her of greed and worse in his ongoing one-sided feud with the maven of Southern cooking.  Others have come down on her for not warning people that her cooking was unhealthy and were almost (no scratch that)  absolutely delighted when she announced she had diabetes. 

What unmitigated arrogance.  Anybody who didn't understand that Paula's style of cooking was not "health food" is very probably mentally challenged.  As someone who uses her recipes on occasion, I know what I'm getting into. I know good and well that using all that butter and stuff isn't healthy, but ever once in a while it won't kill you.  It's celebration food. Sunday dinner, not intended for three meals a day.

We're big boys and girls and we do NOT need a bunch of Yankee busybodies telling us how to cook or who to watch on TV.  Paula could retire right now and run her website and stay busy. Her fans are going nowhere.  The politically correct crowd isn't watching her on TV anyway so it's not likely she's going to lose them.  Why should she give a rat's hiney about the opinions of Anthony Bourdain or Caleb Melloy?  I had to look up Bourdain to know who he even was the first time I heard of his attack on Deen.  And I didn't like him nor his "cuisine".  As Paula so eloquently put it, "We don't eat bugs here in the South."  As to the opinion of Caleb what's-his-name?  Meh.  He's one Forbes columnist who has alienated a reader in one shot.

As to Paula's so-called rambling response to some lawyer trying to pin her as a racist, Paula apologized for having offended anyone by saying things in private in a conversation not meant for anyone to hear her.  They had no business listening in on in the first place - snoopy busy-bodies!  And by the way, if someone pointed a gun in my face while holding up a bank like they did with Paula, I might go home and use some uncomplimentary expressions in reference to him and his character too. 

Give me a break.  Paula's one of the most refreshingly sweet people in the food business.  I have no use for "F-word" flinging, angry all the time arrogant chefs who are so wrapped up in themselves they can't take the time to be polite.  It's one of the reasons Paula is so popular with her fans.  She's a nice person and there aren't enough of those on TV.  Her brother's probably an oaf and did get out of line toward one of Paula's staffers.  Who doesn't have a brother like that.  There's probably a good chance that someone everyone calls them "Bubba" probably doesn't have the most refined sense of social etiquette.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic if these people got their panties in a wad whenever someone called me a cracker, a redneck, honky or use the F-word as an adjective like the, a or an, which I find highly offensive toward women.  Nobody cares about that, though, so I, in turn don't care about what Deen does or says in private.  She's polite and gracious in public. I'm far more outraged at the blistering string of profanity Gordon Ramsey pours out publicly on his shows than I am by Paula Deen. Paula doesn't insult my intelligence by reminding me that too much eggs and butter and white flour will do bad things to my arteries.  I'm not a two-year old.

I'm almost a vegetarian in my regular diet.  I belong to Paula's grandmother's church denomination. I know this stuff already.  If I can't figure out how to adapt her recipes to be healthier or eat such stuff sparingly, then I need to stay out of the kitchen and check myself into a nursing home for the feeble-minded.  And while we're banning words why is it that comedians and fashionable celebrities get to use the word "retard" without consequences? That's way more offensive because it's used as an insult and it stigmatizes someone because of a disability and they don't have a National Association for the Advancement of Developmentally Disabled People.

Sauce for the goose, dude. Think I'll write Paula a letter of support.

Tom King