Shortly after Trump proposed a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigrants I received a long email from someone who read my previous post on Trump and PC. The writer (we\u2019ll call him Bob) asked if I plan to walk back my insistence that political correctness is such a scourge in light of Trump\u2019s \u201cover the top\u201d comments. Bob has fallen into the PC trap, so some additional comments are warranted.<\/p>\n
Bob essentially argued that Trump\u2019s proposal went too far and therefore should be censored politically. Agree or disagree with Trump, there is a serious national security issue here. His proposal is akin to Jimmy Carter\u2019s ban of Iranians from the U.S. during the 1980 hostage crisis, but I don\u2019t remember a public uproar at the time. Many pundits and politicians have called Trump\u2019s proposal unconstitutional, but they apparently don\u2019t realize that the Constitution does not grant rights to non-Americans. Others have compared his proposal to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, although Trump\u2019s proposed action would not affect U.S. citizens. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Trump\u2019s statements disqualify him as a presidential candidate. Senator Graham told Trump to go to hell. The Philadelphia Daily News<\/em> even compared Trump to Hitler.<\/p>\n Two observations should be perfectly clear. First, nobody is attempting to silence Senator Graham or anyone else for their<\/em> outrageous comments. This is the first rule of PC: If you\u2019re on the politically correct side of an issue, you are free to speak your mind<\/em>. Second, very few of those who reject Trump\u2019s proposal have made any attempt at a coherent, intellectual rebuttal. This is the second rule of PC: The objective of silencing the opposition is to avoid serious debate<\/em>.<\/p>\n On the surface, political correctness is about free speech. It should be opposed on these grounds, but at a deeper level PC is really about evading reality. By stifling open and honest debate on the grounds that an argument is offensive, PC promotes an alternate reality. Here\u2019s a simple example in the realm of economics.<\/p>\n Opponents of the welfare state frequently point out that some recipients of government programs seem unwilling to work and are simply taking advantage of the system. Many on the left refer to this as \u201cattacking the poor\u201d while ignoring the fact that the claim is obviously true\u2014Some beneficiaries of welfare programs are taking care of the system<\/em>. In an honest debate, we would want to know how many are abusing the system, how many deserving Americans are helped, how much the programs cost taxpayers, and details of non-government alternatives to alleviating poverty. In a PC-controlled discussion, opponents of the welfare system are \u201chaters\u201d and these issues don\u2019t get covered. The real debate never actually occurs.<\/p>\n The take-home point here is that political correctness is the veil that hinders serious discussion on lots of topics these days. It\u2019s difficult to win a debate when you can\u2019t put all of the facts on the table. It\u2019s time we call PC for what it is\u2014a scourge that\u2019s undermining our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shortly after Trump proposed a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigrants I received a long email from someone who read my previous post on Trump and PC. The writer (we\u2019ll call him Bob) asked if I plan to walk back my insistence that political correctness is such a scourge in light of Trump\u2019s \u201cover the top\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}