Quaking under the jackboot of political correctness. Or not

Terror stalks Britain. Terror stalks much of the Western world. According to journalist Anthony Browne, whose pamphlet 'The Retreat of Reason' has been making considerable waves over the past couple of weeks, this terror is political correctness. A scourge of modern life that has poisoned public debate. Worse, since 1997 Britain has been run 'by a government largely controlled by politically-correct ideology'. Scary. What does this ideology entail? Well:

people who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with, but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned.

Let's put Browne's frightening vision to the test. Here as some of the tenets of political correctness, as posited by Browne:

America, as the world’s most powerful country, can never do any good, even though it is the world’s most powerful liberal democracy, the largest donor of overseas aid, and it defeated both Nazism and Communism.

Golly. So, what happens to people who don't share this view? They are indeed horribly marginalised in modern Britain. Deprived of any real power, they must content themselves with such menial posts as Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Defence, Leader of the Opposition. Prevented by the PC commissars from taking any meaningful part in public life, they are reduced to taking such decisions as sending British troops to war alongside our American allies and their miserable social lives include such low-key events as hosting international leaders and being lauded by the US president for their contribution to the Anglo-American alliance. The iron fist of the PC dictatorship is strong indeed.

What other views are compulsory under the new terror?

The West, as the world’s most powerful cultural and economic group, can safely be blamed for all the world’s ills, even though it is largely responsible for the worldwide spread of prosperity, democracy and scientific advance.

And the people who don't agree with this? The Frederick Forsyths, the Melanie Phillipses, the Boris Johnsons? These poor benighted souls are reduced to publishing bestselling novels and hiding their despised views in weekly columns in mass-circulation newspapers, where no-one apart from the entire population can read them. Horrible it must be to be so excluded from public debate.

But it gets worse. Not just politics are affected.

Multinational corporations are condemned as the oppressors of the world’s poor, rather than seen as engines of global economic growth with vast job-creating investments in the world’s poorest countries, pushing up wages and transferring knowledge.

Again, misery awaits those who disagree with this fundamental PC truth. They can aspire to little more than being some of the most affluent and powerful people in the country, in charge of the economy, pushing global trade to levels unseen before in human history and making Britain and the rest of the West rich beyond any precedent. Pity them, pity them indeed.

Browne's view is chilling in the extreme. If only it were true.

Comments

[The Digester]

Perfect response -- succinct and deflatory.

[dearieme]

But he's got the gist right, hasn't he? The point of PC, like the point of earlier censorships, is to preclude debate rather than encourage it, and to pre-ordain the outcome of any debate that does ensue, by loading the terms in which it may be couched. Not new, of course, but evidently pernicious.

[Third Avenue]

No, dearieme, I think his gist is wrong. His arguments are just one straw man after another. The powerful in Britain pretty much all share his views on the US, capitalism, the superiority of the West. To say that there is an attempt to shut down debate is, it seems to me, ludicrous. The debate screams from every publication, every website, every radio programme.

[Guy Leven-Torres]

I have just written three booklets attacking political correctness. I am against globalism as you will see if you go to www.guyleven-torres.co.uk. I have had my books rejected even when publishing has been agreed beacuse they 'are sympathetic to the British Empire and might upset people, namely Americans'.
It is impossible to get anything even slightly right of centre published in Britain today and I have been writing stuff for years and publishing in academic mags.
Life is shades of grey after all. I regard Blair as the fountain of PC in Britain but then this country was always a lunatic asylum wherein common sense flew out of the window until it directly threatened people, or more likely their pockets.
The British, especially in the South around London are incredibly selfish and politically apathetic.
As for the Right in general it is too self absorbed to coordinate itself into a meaningful opposition to the Left, who are by the way pretty nasty and intolerant of dissent.
The Right like to hide in little corners and build themselves little empires and while they do this, the current them and us situation in Britain can only get worse. That is why nobodies like me have to write angry anti PC books like I have above!
Interesting site... and comments

Regards

Guy Leven-Torres